


The Child of Blood

by Cillo89



Series: Hetalian stories [6]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Banishment, Brothers, Car Accidents, Character Death, Conditioning, Diary/Journal, Disabled Character, Discrimination, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Family Secrets, Flowers, Medical Examination, Mental Instability, Miscarriage, Omega Verse, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex, Sneaking, Some OOC, Though it is Story-Related, Torture, Unplanned Pregnancy, emancipation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15289002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cillo89/pseuds/Cillo89
Summary: One day, you will find this book. You will read it, and you'll be, I hope, surprised. Surprised by such barbarity from my own peers. Surprised I haven't done more, or surprised I haven't done less. Depends. Wouldn't it be nice for a victim's book to be appreciated in a more enlightened time?Please, I beg of you. Don't forget me.





	1. If you were to open your horizons...

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [raison d'être](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312495) by [waffles0up](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffles0up/pseuds/waffles0up). 
  * Inspired by [The Promega Sonata](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129348) by [Ludwiggle73](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludwiggle73/pseuds/Ludwiggle73). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character names:  
> Liviu Alin Borisov is Romania  
> Andrei Mihai Borisov is Moldova  
> Tsvetan Borisov is Bulgaria  
> Elizabeta Héderváry is Hungary  
> Gilbert Beilschmidt is Prussia
> 
> See the end notes for detailed explanation of the story.

The world never seemed to offer many opportunities. To me, everything seemed locked, closed, from the mysterious administration of the school to the office of the country’s most powerful Alpha. Even now, sat in front of the closed door, I waited for something to happen, for someone to do anything, for my life to begin anew. I expected a flood of news, of emotions too strong for me to contain.

Nevertheless, I waited. Everything was closed, everything was locked. I was alone in front of the door, with a budding flower for company, a flower which didn’t dare show its petals. It was too soon, it might say. It isn’t time to unveil oneself, it might think. Let’s stay hidden for bit, let’s stay discreet, and only when I’ll open will I be ready for the world, not when the world would decide it for me.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t this flower. A sweet, bewitching anemone. I would have appreciated, in another life, on another planet, live the existence of a flower, but I had nothing akin to flowers in me, not the sweet petals of the forget-me-not, neither the fragrance of vanilla, nor the spike of the rose. If I had to define myself, it wouldn’t be through flowers. Flowers are fragile, too cunning, too discreetly powerful. I would have liked for someone else to be my flower, I would have liked to have someone seeing me as a protecting figure, to be the tree around which the ivy spins, and stay strong, eternally, unmovable… As if my presence only would be enough to exteriorize someone’s force. I want to be an amplifier, not a receptacle.

I feel like whispering to this flower that I can help it bud, but I noticed earlier the cameras stuck between the furniture, filming me. So, I don’t move, I glare at the door with serenity.

No matter what happens, no matter the answer, everything will change. My life solely depended on the answer of this university.

Since the introduction of a law which forbade to list the nature of the candidates beforehand, some Omegas had been fully accepted as righteous students. Many of them perished afterwards, assassinated by jealous Alphas and Beta braggers. It was unusual indeed for an Omega to pursue one’s studies, and even more in the section my mate had chosen. We had an agreement: I could continue on with my studies, only if he chose the course. I hadn’t flinched, it was something already to be allowed to attend a high-level course! Therefore, I had given him a list of my wishes and, whether by love, or by foolishness, he had accepted I take the one which interested me the most. In the end, I had chosen.

He was, at first, extremely enthusiastic. At least, I think he was. He encouraged me in the procedures, had signed the official documents, authorizing me to partake in such a course. I felt happy I had the luck to marry someone so open-minded.

So I awaited my results. It was an important answer, the one which was coming my way. I imagined myself already walking throughout the long corridors of the school, to know knowledge was near me, almost touchable, incarnated in the right and just professors. Who could be Omegaphobe, surrounded by so much knowledge? Logic and understanding animated these minds for sure, I couldn’t be beaten to death the day after my first school day in a while, not when so many knowledge-lovers were grouped up in such a place!

If I was refused, he had promised me he wouldn’t hold any grudge towards me, but would ask me to definitely stop my puerile dreams, he had said. I agreed to this, as I felt like winning this battle. If I succeeded, he had promised to find me bodyguards who would protect me throughout my studies!

I understood his worries, his demands, therefore I’d respect my promises if the misfortune of failing struck me.

So I waited, in front of the flower, in front of the door, on my chair, stiff as a poker. I looked around the room another time, I looked at my hands, then to the flower, then the door, then the cameras’ eyes, my hands again… I agitated my legs, I listened closely, I became aware of each change I could perceive in the air. It looked like my patience was wearing thin, but I had to wait, so I took it over myself to calm down, to persuade myself it was okay, and soon, I became this creature sat on its chair again, peacefully patient and calmly sure of itself.

Mere minutes passed until I gesticulated again, but the sounds of someone coming and of a paper sheet being pushed under the door, to me, brought me back to a brutal reality I didn’t feel prepared to anymore.

I took the sheet as one would take a baby, with a love I couldn’t explain, even to myself, and read it. I was being congratulated, on this mere, thin sheet, for my excellent results during my years of Omegaformation. They didn’t know I came from this school, and I thanked the government for such a privacy law. My results had been, indeed, praised by my teachers and the school director. It was so long ago I feared I had forgotten everything I had been taught, but when the results of the admission tests came, I became surprised, reading over and over again the distinctions I had been awarded.

I shouldn’t excite the cameras, I shouldn’t be noticed, I had to pass as a normal candidate, an alpha candidate, so there was no tear. They didn’t dare flow, yet I didn’t dare either to let them: what if the flower saw me? And what if, under its petals, under its sumptuous whiteness, it recorded my very moves? What if it held grudges against me for being weak in its presence?

I was confident indeed, but my mate assured me they’d do their best to prevent my success. As the documents were being signed, I had to be as nonsuspicious as possible.

I was euphoric. My work had been rewarding: I deserved, from what the document told, a seat in the best classes. It wasn’t even the one I was aiming for. Despite this, I didn’t choose it. It would make my Alpha male worry too much, I didn’t want to be a daredevil. The document necessitated my husband’s signature, it’s all. I put it back in the envelope it came with and I was finally allowed to leave the room.

I whispered my secret hopes, my deep desires away, to the flower. They would be kept by its presence, deeply planted in its soft ground, where no one would find them, where they would germinate as well. I thanked it, the flower deserved at least that, and I left the room, my results in hand. I was going to go home and tell the good news to my Alpha male. He’d be relieved and glad, he’d be happy with me. At least, one person would be present to celebrate, someone would support me.

It was time it happened.

* * *

 “Liviu, I’m home!” Tsvestan said loudly. “Are you here?”

“Up there!” I answered on a soft tone, making myself visible through the bars of the staircase. I didn’t want to wake Andrei up, the poor thing was deeply asleep and deserved his time alone.

“Oh, is Andrei alright?”

He felt much better indeed. He was twelve years old, and similarly to many young twelve year-old Omegas, he had experienced his first heats. It lasted for a whole week, and it hurt him.

“Yes, but I advise you not to go up” I informed him, “I’ll clean up tomorrow, but today, he has to sleep.”

“Was it… difficult for him?”

“It was his first, so they’re kinda random. He thought he was over it on Wednesday, but… it didn’t work out like that, unfortunately.”

“Have you talked to him about the pills?”

“It isn’t time”, I countered. “I told you already, he’s too young for this stuff. He has to grow naturally, and when everything will be settled in his body, we will only begin to propose him if he wants them. What do they teach you in Alphaformation anyway?”

“Sorry.”

He was sincere, I felt it. I know what they are taught in Alphaformation, to be honest. They are taught how to fight, in all possible ways. Protection, loyalty, courage… They are educated to make workers out of them, being physical or intellectual. The only common course we have is sex ed, which played a major role in everyone’s life.

“No problem. Was your day okay?” I asked.

“Umh, yeah. We welcomed a new member in the team. It’s… the first Omega around.”

Of course, I was captivated immediately. I smiled a toothy smile, pointy teeth, perhaps too sharp, and put my hand on his forearm with affection, my other hand hiding my smile.

“I’m happy to hear you say that. How is he doing, there?”

“Quite good. He isn’t useless at all, but the other Alphas… They take him for a dumbass, well, as usual. His keys were stolen twice just today.”

“And he’s got his license? How impressive. What’s his name?”

“Beilschmidt, Gilbert. Cool, smiley. A nice guy overall, but Elizabetha…”

Ah, this bitch.

“The bitch?”

“Don’t call her that. If she could hear you…”

“I’d love to tell her that to the face, if you allow me. She always got on my nerves anyway. We never got along, and now, she harasses a poor Omega who only wants to work? What a jackass… Jackass!”

Elizabetha was an Alpha female, well known around here. She loved to hide as a flower, and I think she could be defined as one. She loved winning, loved being powerful loved her natural superiority. We used to go to school together, when we were younger, although we had been separated because of our nature afterwards, we still took the same trajectory. On these trips, she never missed an opportunity to prank me, trap me, harass me…

When she had cut her hair short, giving up her long tails for something more boyish, a haircut she didn’t keep long either, she had taken the cut straps of hair to force me to wear them, as if three ridiculously long pigtails stuck in my hair with clothespins was an amusing way to spend time. I had been scolded for “misbehavior” as I had, vainly, fought back.

“Dinner’s ready” I told him, all smiley again, trying to keep my teeth discreet though. “I won’t let Elizabetha ruin the evening, I’ll forget it, I promise.”

I’ll forget it. Many times, I had been told to forget it, because such thing didn’t involve me, because such other that wasn’t in my cords, because I wasn’t born with the right nature. The Omegaformation teaches correctly: it’s a teaching of forgetting. There, it is taught how to forget, not how to learn. Now, I forget.

Andrei found in himself the energy to dine with us, unable to sleep, in the end. His week had been rough, and he was glad he found Tsvetan home. He threw himself in his arms right after seeing him in the living room and engulfed himself in his smell. I was relieved to see him run so energetically, he was perhaps healing up quickly, which was a really good sign for his health. Heats always were a hard time.

“Tsve, Tsve! Can you take me to school tomorrow?”

“You don’t have much of a choice”, I told my mate. “I’m not here tomorrow morning, I’ll get him in the afternoon, if you want.”

“You’re going to see your friends?”

It was unusual for me to tell him I was going out. I didn’t go out without his consent, although I knew he would never refuse that for me, I asked him, instinctively, if I was allowed to.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t friend I was visiting tomorrow. That evening, I wanted to ask him the most important question in my life.

I indicated to him we would speak about it later on, and, understanding instantly, he quieted his curiosity for later. We had been married for fifteen years, we had developed, without even realizing it, many techniques to understand each other. I was married to him when I was twelve, my family’s will it was. I didn’t know him at all, never had seen him before. I was too shy, too closed to go against anyone.

We had spent the first nights in such an embarrassment that we didn’t speak, except for polite words. These memories weren’t soft, neither were they bitter, just blurry, as if they didn’t belong to me. It was expected of us we mate, to seal our union, but this happened much later. Tsvetan was stressed out, I was too daring… In the end, our first time had been strangest: I had remained there, unmoving, soundless, under Tsvetan, moved by low-pitched groans, tired himself out over my body. And worst, as he had finished his affair, I had found nothing else to say but “thank you”, and he foolishly answered “you’re welcome”.

Dinner, which happened flawlessly, was cut short by Andrei, fatigued by his week. He went back to his bed and fell asleep quickly, leaving me with Tsvetan. He kissed us goodnight and went away cheerfully.

“To think you were worried about his health…” Tsvetan murmured in my ear, once he was gone. “He’s as fit as a fiddle. Growing can’t hurt him. Nature did things better than what you think.”

Tsvetan didn’t think a word he was saying. Alphaformators did. Not Tsvetan. Nature isn’t a benevolent goddess.

“Do you still administer him your childhood rituals?” he wondered suddenly, with a precautious tone.

“Of course, I do.”

Tsvetan often scolded me for that. When we were younger, Andrei and I had superstitious parents. They passed that on to me, and I wasn’t complaining. What bad could there be in believing in the magic of everyday life objects?

What else could I believe in, but something more cruel, more inhumane, which would have forced me into a more developed form of slavery, akin to the one my nature forced me into? So I kept them, my family’s traditions weren’t vain or stupid.

“So, what did you want to tell me? What are you up to, tomorrow?”

Ah. Tomorrow’s stuff. Sometimes, in my wildest dreams, I imagine myself jumping of joy, become the hysterical me I used to be, eccentric and mildly attractive, the one I was before entering the final stages of Omegaformation. However, the school had done its job: I wasn’t this me anymore, and in no way could I become myself again. So, I decided, some times ago, that I needed a way of rebelling. Anything, something which would made me feel free, as if I wasn’t me at all. Strangely enough, I wanted to complete the process the Omegaformation had instigated and distance myself from what I once was.

“Tomorrow, I… I’d like… I’d like to sign up for school.”

“School? You want to see your Omegaformators again?” he joked, although I didn’t laugh.

“Tsve, I’d like you to… authorize me to sign up for university. As you promised me.”

I was trying to appeal his benevolence. It was an old promise we had done when we were younger. I was twelve, he was fifteen, and we were married already. I was just out of the first semesters of Omegaformation, the lightest, the least violent and I had the wit, or the imprudence, of making this promise with my spouse. _I want to go to university when I’m older. Will you let me?_

At the time, as he had accepted, I jumped around, happy, embraced him with affection, like a child would a friend. I dared, back then, show my sharp canines, jump, move around, live joyfully.

“Sign up…? Liviu, isn’t tomorrow the last day for this?”

“Yes… Yes, it is… I’m sorry.”

It was an instinct I couldn’t prevent, I went on my knees to beg for forgiveness. Beg to receive some decency.

“I’m sorry” I repeated. “I was afraid you’d say no. I’m… I’m deeply sorry.”

Tsvetan forced me up and showed me to the living room’s sofa, where he sat first, to show me I had to follow him there. He stared at my eyes, glared for a long time. Tsvetan wasn’t skilled with words. He was clumsy and lacked both elegance and tact. It was understandable though: those aren’t educative fundamentals of the Alphaformation. Therefore, he was excused for these lacks. Tsvetan was kind, in spite of everything. Despite the warnings of the Omegaformators, Tsvetan was the best ally I had in this world. He was loving and calm, silent and patient.

The old me would have hated this opposed incarnation maybe. I could not say it: I didn’t know him anymore, this young Liviu, still uneducated. He was hidden between two memories, he was the one I saw when I went from one dream to another at night. This brief moment, so short nobody ever noticed it, was curled up against my thoughts, hidden by the teaching I had received.

“I really want to go”, I said again, seeing he gave me the chance to explain myself. “I don’t do anything here. I clean, I tidy up, I cook…”

“You don’t read anymore?”

“I know all the books of the house by heart, Tsve.  I have read them again and again, I want to… change air. You know, some months ago… A law was introduced: admission entries are now blind. It means I have low chances of being refused because of my nature. There’s hope of succeeding, isn’t it?”

“Liv… What do you want to study, there?”

“Anything. I let you choose, if that worries you.”

I had a preference, but it was up to Tsvetan in the end. It was his signature next to the documents, not mine. I was ready to learn anything. Mathematics, literature, art, chemistry, biology… The Omegaformation teaches botanic only, no other science. We didn’t have a choice. We could, however, decided ourselves between multiple arts: painting, music, dance or singing.

“What interests you the most?”

“Classic literature.”

He didn’t answer right away, and I thought I had gotten on his nerves with my puerile wishes.

“You could have talked with me about it earlier, I could have had more time to think it through… though, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to give it a try. It’s just… you know the news.”

“I know. Some died of it. I’m not scared.”

“We’ll find you bodyguards. I want that.”

“Is that a yes, then?”

He nodded and, once more, I had to contain my happiness. Presentable Omegas don’t burst out into laughter, aren’t euphoric. They stay calm under all circumstances.

He took me in his arms and put his cheek against mine. He rubbed my cheek for some seconds, I gave in in the embrace, he agitated his hand against my back for comfort.

“One day”, he said, suave, “I’d like for you to become who you once were.”

He let me go then, took my by the shoulders to stare at my eyes. I wasn’t allowed to go back to who I was, if I ever was someone else than the current me. He knew it as well as me. Law forbade a graduated Omega he “doesn’t take in account nor apply the teaching in these domains”.

My instructions have been clear. I was forced to let my hair grow, at least to the middle of my back, to bleach them blond, a more “adequate” color. At first, they had gotten their hands over blue lenses, made to hide my reddish eyes. Although I wasn’t told to wear them each day, it soon changed, and I was given with them a myriad of pharmaceutical products to protect my eyes. I was taught how to smile nicely, how not to show my pointy, violent, inadequate teeth. How to speak correctly, without vexing my Alpha’s ego, how to walk straight, how to sit, eat, live. All of this was taught to us, with our consent, or not.

It was the last lesson, the most important one, of the Omegaformation. Our consent is worthless, judgement isn’t up to us.

“You know it wouldn’t bother me. You know I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

He wouldn’t. He wasn’t the source of my fears. Rather, I was the source. Disobedience was worth electric shocks at the Omegaformation center. The intensity of the electric discharge grew proportionally with the gravity of our misconduct. It really made you think.

He passed a hand through my long, perhaps too long, hair. It flowed against my back, a strawberry blond flux. It was straight, without a default, symbol of the center’s perfectionism. It had to be let free, never restrain them. Tsvetan admitted to me he was weak for my hair, so I kept it for him, not for the center. He toyed with my bangs, curled them around his fingers, drew weird patterns against my back. He was trying to behave as an Alpha, and sometimes I didn’t know if he did it because it was his duty, or a habitude.

There existed so many obstacles between him and me. Our different natures drew us apart, alienated us: I couldn’t fundamentally comprehend an Alpha, as it was impossible for him to understand the needs and desires of an Omega. If only it was just this, we could try, thanks to our common human understanding, to overcome the mistakes Nature had overlooked in its creation. Unfortunately, society, the formation centers, each person, individually, instituted another barrier of social and moral codes: Alphas had to act as Alphas, not otherwise. I had to act as an Omega, not otherwise, or I’d risk blame, punishment and reformation.

There existed, between Tsvetan and me, an infinity of worlds, of inscrutable possibilities. Maybe, if I stretched my arm out, I would be able to touch him, reach him, to brush over his true self. This temptation of wanting more than what one has was reprimanded. Not punished per se, but badly seen. As if to limit oneself to one’s narrow vision of the world was right.

In a world which discourages the discovering of more horizons, I wondered how we managed to build our society.

Therefore, I didn’t know what Tsvetan thought of the situation, and I didn’t dare ask, this evening. I rather let him caress my back, toy with my hair, kiss me languorously. I can’t say, even today, if we did it willingly, or if it was because Nature dictated it to us. Was it love or conformity to social constructs?

Were we used to each other, or was it pleasure?

He was enterprising, this evening. He assured himself Andrei was off to sleep and undressed me then. I did the same for him.

I didn’t smile. Never have I smiled during these moments. Yet, I love him. I was persuaded of that, but each time he touched me, it was as if the me of the past, the one who haunted me, the one hidden in the interspace of two dreams, was sinking deeper in my consciousness. To achieve what was my primary natural function made me more different than ever. I should rejoice, because I was looking for complete alienation. One day, perhaps, I’ll get used to it, and will live normally.

What is there to say about our naked bodies, now? As all Omegas, I was hairier. The courses of Omegaformation taught it was a technique of warming the body up, to ensure the safety and the survival of the Omega’s children. Alphas were less hairy, but in the end, all that tended to disappear with our modern world. The human body adapts quickly.

He had more detailed muscles, of course. Years of Alphaformation shape the body into a violent machine, whose muscles could be used as cannon fodder. He was slightly smaller, which was rare, but not unheard of. He held me in his hands like a precious item, a gem, a jewel, a bijou.

A mere accessory, which he could use as he wanted.

 _I love you_ , I wanted to whisper. _I love you, so take me more into consideration. Look at me like I’m someone, in these moments. Not like an object, not like a receptacle._

This night, each caress burned me, each kiss tore me apart and each thrust brutalized me. As often after our affair, I cried.

Despite the Omegaformators’ efforts, they had not completed their job. It was up to me to take myself in charge, to completely format myself. I couldn’t allow me to be such a disappointment to Tsvetan.

 

“I’d like to see your eyes again”, he tells me, honeylike voice, under my neck. He curls up against my body, tranquilizes my sobs with his body heat, makes peace with the tremor of my heart.

I too, Tsve, would have loved to see them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this gets attention, it will get other chapters, otherwise, it'll stay a oneshot.  
> This is an attempt at writing Omegaverse without it feeling weird and clumsy (although the very idea of Omegaverse if both weird and clumsy, because there isn't a point to it other than express weird kinks or praise invasive behaviors...). I try to get it right, so please comment if you feel something is odd.
> 
> Romania is OOC at first, but I think, after you've read it, that you now understand why. Potential future chapters would correct that, that is, if it interests anyone.
> 
> As I want to write something "normal" with Omegaverse, I want to point out that, in such a divised society where nature is so praised, people wouldn't be divided as "boys" or "girls". So pronouns like he and she are really just used for the understanding of the reader, as I can't create three new pronouns, a whole new language, out of nothing. Imagine that all Omegas are called with one pronoun exclusive to them, Alphas have theirs too, and Betas do too. There is some difference between "male" and "female" Omegas/Alphas/Betas, but in such a society where what matters is pregnancy and reproduction, this difference wouldn't be taken in account.
> 
> Tell me what you think about it in the comments!
> 
> PS: Also, no, Tino, Guardian Angel isn't over. I'm just struggling with the fourth chapter because of character development inconsistency, and I really want to work it out, so I'll take the time I need to correct that. It'll get released one day, and its prequels as well, worry not.


	2. Bleedings

When I learned I was with child, the news ravished Tsvetan more than it affected me. The idea was like out of a fairytale. The doctors auscultated me for many hours. They were not that optimistic, I was one of these merely fertile Omegas, the ones family tend to sell away. For a pittance.

Oh, the storm howled outside. The news was brought to me amidst the tsunami of rainclouds, and soon followed the desperation. It’s during these times I wished I was too old to procreate. I was then lain down onto a massage table, cut in its center by a sheet hung from the ceiling. Someone forced my legs apart, I didn’t know whom, as the sheet obstructed the view. My hands were linked on my stomach, my head was facing the right, where I could see the blank wall, empty of any decoration, any extravagance.

They didn’t want to distract us from the fingers running along our legs. We had to concentrate on them, memorize the way they took, endure this punishment. The air was sterilized, no odor other than the doctor’s hot breath reached me.

A cold silence had been set. The fingers violating my intimacy were annoying, so that I happened to grimace as the embarrassment continued to grow.

“Sane _pudendum_ , functional. Pheromones have been triggered, healthy pregnancy.”

These were the only pieces of information we had access to. _Pudendum_ was an expression solely linked to Omegas. It came from Latin, that I knew. I had read many books on that dead language, I knew its grammar and its rules fairly well. The free time I was given allowed me to learn that much. _Pudendum_ symbolized an expression of shame: what one has to be ashamed of.

As opposed to the Omega system, the Alpha breeding system was named _superbum_ , that that one has to take pride in. This kind of teaching is done during the Omegaformation. Sometimes, I do wonder if we, Omegas, are born with something more than that. Perhaps there exists a supplementary membrane, a conglomerate of special cells, source of this shame, lodged deep in our bodies, which make the shame inextricable and incurable. It then passes from body to spirit very easily and links both of them tightly, and we all grew up around this firm Omega belief: be ashamed of yourself, that’s what makes you modest; last in simplicity.

The Omegaformation teaches Alphas are strong on the short term, while Omegas are made to last, and I wondered how long I’d survive without Tsvetan. How much time would it need for me to erase the marks of his invasions? Kill the child he had given me, remove his odor from my body, erase his family name on my identity documents, erase the drawings his hands had left on me… It was unfair to think this way. Tsvetan wasn’t an innocence drinker, as they were called. He never forced himself onto me, and what point would there be in that anyway? I was not allowed to refuse, he could use my body as it pleased him.

“Have you taken contraceptive before?” I was asked with a toneless, cold voice.

“For three years, but I stopped taking them two years ago.”

No answer, no acknowledgment. The session was almost coming to an end, the doctor had risen up again and had left for God knows where. I heard the sound of a keyboard and imagined he was writing my pregnancy file, that Tsvetan had to update for me.

No clock indicated the time I had spent in the room, on the table, and I felt my legs sting. I moved them on a regular rhythm, quickly, as if I had to unleash all the energy I had been forbidden my whole life. Perhaps was I just understanding the gravity of the news: I was gravid. My hands weren’t joined on my stomach anymore, rather, I tried to keep them busy, I replaced my hair, scratched my nose, felt my ribs, and soon I got it.

And as usual, I cried.

My tears had different tastes depending on the emotions I was trying to bottle up. It was a strange thought, but it was mine, and this was one of the last think I could have in my possession: my thoughts, and they’ve been mine for my whole life.

So I often had a bitter taste in my mouth. A sordid mixture of rosemary and dandelion. Disgusting, displeasing, my sadness’ savor. A sudden metallic taste was added, more sickening than before. I lifted my hand to my mouth, and saw on my fingers the remnants of reddish, almost black spot.

I couldn’t help the cry of distress which alarmed the obstetrician.

“A problem?”

“I’m having a nosebleed.”

The sheet, moved by the random agitations of the obstetrician, was raised a bit for him to hand me out a tissue. I took it and pampered my upper lip, an expectable embarrassment flourishing in me.

“You think too much. Calm down a bit, it’s a mere pregnancy, you’ll manage.”

I had often been told that. Even my family said that Omegas’ nosebleeds were caused by overthinking. I was a bit unhappy at the idea that my nose could run at inopportune times. I wouldn’t have liked for people to see me as a fomenter, I have never been one.

The doctor left the room, and that was my signal. I lifted my legs back to me to get down the table. I couldn’t help it, I also checked my crotch, with a candid naïveté which had overtaken me. Was my body truly made for breeding? I was too thin, I had often been told so, I didn’t have enough fat, and I’ve been told I was too conscious of my appearance. I didn’t know what bad I had done to deserve this last remark, maybe the numerous care I administer to my hair?

Tsvetan greeted me at the exit. I had my long mantel back on and waited for him to take my arm before we could continue. Tsvetan liked when we walked with our arms linked, he said he loved to show our link to people.

Not our love. Tsvetan wouldn’t use such a dangerous word, which could only from my impure, impious mouth, the one he still dared to kiss.

“I talked with the medic as you were changing.”

“What has he told you?”

“Well, that we’d have our name appointment in two weeks, and he expects we’ll have our choice made by then.”

I didn’t have to play dumb. The obvious problem was obvious. Did we want to keep the child?

“He spoke of complications because of a malformation in your body, something they noticed in your Omegaformation’s file. Something which could potentially jeopardize the… whole thing, or remain harmless. He still gives us a choice.”

 _Don’t take me for an idiot_ , I could have told him. He wasn’t giving me the choice. You were the only one deciding, I’m just a pawn, I’m not even my own life’s protagonist. It is a chance I’ve been given though. Usually, it was forbidden to negatively impact on a pregnancy, except if it were doomed to failure. So in this story, three different endings awaited me. A child could be born from my own flesh, a cadaver would be removed from my body, or we take the lead and decide we don’t want a child, and everything will be behind us.

You know what, though?

I kept it.

 

“I’m sorry”, I told him, drying my tears away in vain. “I am so terribly sorry.”

After our intercourse, one thought kept my mind busy. A powerful thought, rising from the depth of my subconscious, until resurfacing, coming from mere nervous connections to my grimacing face and my bitter tears. I went off the bed and went on my knees to beg for forgiveness.

I hit my knee against the wooden bed, adorned with carved roses, and I almost fell. Tsvetan put his elbow on my pillow and looked at me with curiosity from the heights of the bed. The cover still hid most of his body, though I could see, near his legs, the remaining energy of his _superbum_.

He ended up caressing my hair languorously, like one would do to a puppy to calm it down after a panic attack. I then wondered curiously. The infinity of worlds which remained between Tsvetan and me, was it its fault that his touch against my skin felt like burns? Was it the cause for the change of sensation of his hand against my face? There were maybe whole stories happening in these worlds, and so, actions decided elsewhere there would influence my senses here.

“You know that dwelling on the past does you no good, Liv”, he kindly stated to me. “What was it about?”

“The obstetrician”, I whispered back after some time. “It’s my fault, I apologize deeply, Tsve. So, terribly, sorry.”

Tsvetan helped me back up on the bed and took my hands warmly. He stared at me with a benevolent smile, so rare on his face contorted by his Alpha convictions.

I was shaken by my memories. Simple situations could generate such shameful moments where I cry a child who had not seen the light of day. Some months after this first appointment, Tsvetan, Andrei and I went for a car trip. We had to meet with Tsvetan’s parent, an old Beta-Omega couple. On the road, Andrei noticed we had not taken the same path as before, and I realized it too, then, and asked Tsvetan about it. He had made a mistake somewhere because of a lack of attention, distracted by God knows what. Therefore, on this land path, so common, so similar to the one we would take to visit Tsvetan’s family, we encountered a tractor.

The car, especially. A wrong maneuver and the tractor had fallen from the field which overhung the path we were one, and as it sank in the road, Tsvetan, surprised, having no time to use the brakes, decided to turn abruptly, which sent the car flying in the lower field. It rolled over, too. From the inside, it looked like nothing less than an imminent death, and I had learned how to react during these moments. It had come overtime.

Once everything had stopped, we discovered everyone was alright. Andrei was shaken, but whole. He was the luckiest, with mere bruises constellating his skin. Tsvetan’s face had met the airbag with so much force he had his nose broken and his cheeks burned. These wounds were ridiculous, they disappeared over time, in a month or so.

As for me, I lived with a dislocated shoulder and an instant miscarriage. We learned it soon enough thanks to Tsvetan. He had taken his role of Alphafather dearly, as short as his time had been. The child was dead.

We had been transported to the nearest hospital per ambulance, and the first person I saw as I woke up wasn’t the doctor but Tsvetan’s father.

“The child is dead. It’s your fault.”

This information had not become my credo then, it had been so for a long time. As soon as the car rolled over, I knew it, and the bitterness of my tears reminded it of that every day of my life. The obstetrician who auscultated me next confirmed the initial thoughts: had my body not been so weak, had I not been so unfertile, the child could have lived. But it lived no more, and there was nothing anyone could do.

This precise event continued to haunt me. I like to think of the young me as a thought-traveler, living between dreams and trying to delete these memories. He’d lure them in and prevent their manifestation, vainly, of course, but he would try. The innocent part I remained with was fighting for my wellbeing, but I sometimes had the thought it was fighting me, as simple as that. Its devotion against my traumas revive them indefinitely, and that’s how I empty the body I inhabit of its tears. Tsvetan observes me for a long time, caressing my torso with his hands, rolling his fingertips on my nipples, then having his hands fall onto my stomach, putting a calm hand over my belly button.

“It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Instinctively, I launched myself onto him, curling my arms around his neck as I hid under his jaw.

Stuck tightly to his body, I had the feeling I was reducing the gap which tore us apart. I felt myself traveling through layers of dimensions, all these universes which refused for me to pass, and when I was finally in front of Tsvetan, his true self, I despaired once more. A last layer blocked the way, thicker than the others, but it was transparent.

A sole question traversed the barrier and reached me like an electroshock.

A question Tsvetan had asked me years ago, the day we first met. This day had been a plot twist, though we didn’t know it. We were relaxing next to a lake, near his parents’ residency. This lake remained one of my favorite place for many years.

“Liviu, doesn’t it bother you to be an Omega?”

“What?” I answered enthusiastically, agitating my feet in the water and splashing it on my shorts.

“I don’t know… Mama told me… you’d be sad. Are you?”

 “Me? Uhm, no, it’s dumb” I had answered, chuckling candidly. “I like it here with you.”

He had stared at me with an air of misunderstanding, as if my own will of staying with him had bothered him. He countered with some sort of cheerfulness:

“I can’t wait till we have babies! Mama told me she wanted plenty! You want too, right, uh?”

Even after our marriage, even after fifteen years, children still told themselves this very promise, to their first love mainly. They wanted children later, and all children want more children. I thought so as well, I didn’t know better, and I was taught I had to want babies, so why would I have gone against that? I was wholly accepting of myself back then, but that was because I wasn’t aware of everything I stood for.

A young Omega does not know what awaits them in their years of Omegaformation. The place where your hair is cut against your will, where your intimacy is violated, where you lose all dignity. The years of Omegaformation began directly after a marriage. Parents chose a partner for their child, and once the choice was made, they’d have the children meet, recognize one another for some days, and they were then sent to formation. It was life’s most important period, this formative step teaches what’s best to do in life.

“Tsve…” I whispered suavely in his ear. “I love you.”

Yes, in the past, I’ve blamed myself for my nature. I condemned the gods for they had made an object of me, and I blasphemed once more when I learned my brother was destined to the same suffering I had went through.

This is why I asked Tsvetan to let me to university. If a member of the family is attending a university, it is not necessary to present the young Omega to anyone. Education was primed over breeding in very specific cases. The government wanted to valorize the contributing members of society, therefore, there was no need to contribute to society by breeding if the family contributed by studying and then working.

Nonetheless, it didn’t exempt the child from marriage at one point in life. In any ways, an Omega could not live alone. When our parents died, Andrei ended up without a tutor without our Alphafather, so he was sent to his closest family: me. I had no legal right on his education, no omega could take a child in charge. Thus Tsvetan was forced to welcome him into our home.

“Liviu, I’ve received… news, this morning. A call from your uncle Francis. Your parents are… dead.”

He had unveiled that to me with more sadness than wanted. It was a comical irony from fate itself that he had always more been affected by human events that I had been. As an Omega, you are stereotype to be the affective one, the child-caring one, but our relationship was much different. He wept for the dead and I wept for the births. It wasn’t a dead child I was weeping for on the bed, but rather the disappointment which perturbed my senses, the rancor I felt against myself for bringing Tsvetan in all my problems.

He cried for my parents for a day at least, and insisted for us to wear our mourning clothes. I had not cared before I understand what was truly at stake. Andrei was alone. The judge gave him away to Tsvetan. He lost all filiation to our deceased parents and in some way, it was as if he had been married already. His family name was changed to Borisov, Tsvetan’s family name, the one I had since our marriage. Our doom legacy ended sooner than expected. It’s Tsvetan’s name which will be passed down in history, and mine is forever lost.

“I like you too” he hesitated. These words were limp in his mouth, an acrid and slimy taste. He didn’t think one word he was saying, but I lapped up everything he said nonetheless.

I kept believing in their veracity. I had faith that, someday, he’d truly love me, and that this love would solve my issues, my defaults of fabrication. I was afraid I’d be sent for reformation after I’d broke the protocol, but would that really be nefarious to me?

I’d love for them to do the job instead of me. For them to format me purely, so that I wouldn’t have to do it myself. I should perhaps show myself there voluntarily and ask for a brainwashing session. Who knows what they’d answer?

_“We are not hypnotizers. Leave, now.”_

The fear this process awoke in my was due to my prior formation. The Omegaformation is violent and brutal, and I hope someday that I’ll be able to ask Tsvetan what exactly happens during the Alphaformation.

Then, I’d ask my Beta friend what the Betaformation is like.

I’d regroup these in this book that I’m leaving for the future civilizations. In this book, you can read the wrecks of the past, of an era I hope has been terminated.

My work isn’t a fomenter’s work, merely the one of an optimist. A dreamer, in any case. My inscriptions in this book are not to be taken with irony, and I imagine that someday, I’ll be mocked for my reactions, thus I am going to remain honest.

Despite my critics or reproaches, I love Tsvetan with a love that cannot be measured, from the depths of my heart, and I expect nothing of my life but tranquility of the spirit. It is the reason I write my emotions down, maybe I want them out of my mind to ease the burns they leave in their path. I project them out of me with ink and hope to never see them again.

Words dance, dance and dance, while I remain seated near the counter, in the evening, pretending to work on school homework.

I want this book to be the luminaire of the future, as I won’t be alive for the realization of my hopes, though they’ll be written down in this book forever. Appreciate, readers, the tale of my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story's chronology is complex in its presentation. I often switch period without explicitly mentionning it, and that you have to understand through context. The job is to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle together and I wrote that knowingly: this story is the memoirs of a person, it isn't as organized as in a journal. The person knows their own life, so they don't feel the need to sort everything out: it's clear to them. I try to make things clearer with details like age and location, though I apologize if it is still blurry.
> 
> What's expressed here doesn't reflect my actual opinions. It's not a moral world I wish for. Strange how far you can go with Omegaverse, and I feel like some other writers haven't even tried to do something with it. Something that's not pure kink and sex. Though I've found gems written by incredible artists sometimes.
> 
> The next chapter will explain in details the "years of formation" which are numerously mentioned. It'll get really dark and shocking, with many non-con elements, there'll be a trigger warning at the beginning of the next chapter.
> 
> I've been writing a lot more recently. Expect a tad more updates, like some other stories and oneshots.
> 
> PS: Pudendum is an actual word. Superbum is just something I came up with.


	3. An uprising from our bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introduced in this chapter : Toris = Lithuania

According to my reflections, as negligible as they were, humanity could not be corrupted. Things could only better themselves, each generation learns from the mistakes of the past ones and progresses. “Progress” is crystal clear: it comes from a Latin word which means “to walk forwards”. Societies long for perfection, and this thought gave me faith in the future.

Each element had its own developing speed nonetheless, and the Omegaformation seemed to belong to another temporal dimension. Changes done there were rare, except the betterments made organization-wise, everything else remained frozen in time. The lessons I received were similar to the ones taught during the era of the clannish wars. Even war rules had been taught to us, as odd as it may seem nowadays.

Omegaformation is a derisory word. It’s transparent in its composition, does not leave room for unclear, shadowy parts. However, these years spent in the Omega centers are unclear and traumatizing years. I may be crazy for hoping that writing my experiences down will make me forget them, will wash them out of my mind like you do a spot on fabric. I want to uproot the evils which poison me, and plant a cute flower instead, a transforming burgeon which would irradiate with happiness.

After a marriage is secured, though there are some optional preliminary months, young children are sent to formation. Formation is an ancestral step in life, it has been meaningful for all human generations which treaded the earth. In ancient civilizations, it was mostly done by the heads of the clan, and so the clannish knowledge was passed down to the youngsters. After the clannish wars and the creation of bigger and more developed human societies to the establishment of grand modern cities, the process underwent some transformations. My sources are but certified History books, the ones the government produced, therefore, the information pieces are not to be fully taken as the truth, as it’s impossible to wholly trust the government and its propaganda.

These transformations were actually institutionalizations. Formation schools sprouted up then, and this system lasted until our modern days. So, I entered the Omegaformation at twelve and a half approximately. My parents announced it to me one week before the fateful date, and I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was young and ignorant still, I contemplated the idea to make friends. As a first lesson, my mother told me, I had to pack up by myself. I hadn’t fully understood, but lessons got me excited too, so I packed up diligently and with my usual past eccentricity.

I had thrown in there all the clothes I’d need, but also my favorite items from my room, notably, a snow globe which sheltered under its bubble a world which bewitched me, a dreamy universe enclosed in snow.

My mother had not been pleased. She scolded me meekly for my lack of seriousness, and then again, I did not fully get it.

Children however perfectly understand the gravity of this important part of their life. Parents repeat so much “Omegaformation time is soon! Aren’t you excited?”. They lull us, they trigger our imaginations to make the work for them. The Omega centers of the country gifted us post-graduation pictures of their best specimens, bewilderingly beautiful Omegas. They shone with all the typical qualities, the ones we all grew to long for after this conditioning. We dreamt of the Omegaformation as a way to make accomplished adults out of us. And that is how we underwent the highest betrayal at day one, we felt betrayed and outraged, pretty insignificant words compared to the greatness of the dread which shook us.

The first day, we got put in ranks after the orders of authoritarian Alphas in a lowly lit room, though it was vast. The ground tiling froze our feet for the entire duration of the presentation as it indeed was a presentation. An Alpha with a militarily decorated cap detailed in brief words the usual events of a typical day. First came an essential medical check we would all undergo, although there were hundreds of us in the room. Omega centers had the necessary facilities to welcome that many people simultaneously.

Before this check, it was asked of us to remove our clothes. We all glared at each other with astounded faces. Nobody had dared talk, all seemed gloomy. The chief Alpha’s brutal voice repeated calmly: “Undress yourselves.”

Some had begun to pull on their shirts with hesitation, but we mostly remained frozen in front of an order which felt wrong and strongly undoable.

Then, the chief Alpha enraged. He screamed with a thundering voice which electrified the atmosphere, screamed for us to remove our clothes. “When an Alpha’s speaking, you ought to obey!” he chanted with firmness. We obliged with repugnance, so I undressed, removed my claret shirt and my deep blue tee. I then removed my black pants, the ones which fitted me the most, and as many others, I remained in my underwear with incertitude.

I noticed that other Omegas were wearing bras, for the ones equipped enough at such a young age. We examined each other for a long time, in a sordid silence, then the Alpha’s voice echoed once again in the vast room, leaving an acute buzzing in the ears. We proceeded to remove our panties and we were told to sort our clothes out properly for them to be taken back later.

I recall I tried to hide my body, leaning over a bit, a hand over my private parts and the other on my torso. We all sported that same pose, we all looked so weak, fragile and delicate, bent over from shame because of our nudity. Some, however, didn’t look embarrassed at all and listened to the barked orders with vivid captivation. When we finished to pile the clothes, we were called twenty at a time for the medical check. The list was organized with the names only, so I didn’t wait that long for my turn. Led to the exit, the one which linked the room to the vast courtyard which exposed our nudity to the world, we had to cross its entirety to reach the medical facilities.

The ground scratched my feet and the wind stung my skin. We traveled in a single line and each misstep was violently reprimanded with the threat of a slap. I was in the middle of the line, though the young Omega in front of me, who struggled to walk straight without shoes, was stripped from the line by one of the supervisor Alphas and placed behind, and I was taken to the front, and without an explication or a single word.

We reached the rooms in a dead silence. I was sent the first and greeted by an easygoing Beta. He wore the same attire the Alphas did, the only difference being the “β” symbol, sewed in green on a breast pocket, near the heart. Alphas boasted that “α” proudly, this symbol of their nature they could hoist near all official buildings. I noticed his enthusiasm with inexorable suspiciousness. He merrily and politely welcomed me. He didn’t seem disconcerted by the lack of attire, lack I still felt against my grazed feet because of stones and my icy skin.

His cold hand against my shoulder had me shiver of stupor, but again, he ignored it and led me to an auscultation table, the same kind used by obstetricians, except the middle cloth which had been removed.

I lay there silently and waited for indications which never came. I remained in that pose for ten minutes, time I spent observing the disposition of the room. White walls like I had never seen before, modern machines akin to torture instruments but nicely presented, and most notably, a gigantic screen placed near a computer which purred smoothly.

The doctor, or so we called them that, although we never had a proof they were truly doctors, was typing on his keyboard with rare interest. He read each message carefully and nodded his head regularly, as if he was listening to someone talking.

After some time, he stood back up and turned to me happily. I wasn’t especially afraid, perhaps just disoriented, but I trusted him, I had the feeling I had found a landmark, a smile in this disgusting place. I mirrored his smile with a shyness I hadn’t known I had, then he messed up my hair.

“Ah, you children! You’re always so cute when you come in there!” he exclaimed as he replaced one of my brown bangs which obstructed my vision. “We’ll begin with the checks. Don’t be embarrassed, please, I’m just doing my job.”

He said he was doing his job, but truth be told, he also was the supervisor of my floor in the dormitories.

He took the computer’s seat and placed it next to the table I was laying onto. He began to feel my face plumply, inspecting the roundness of my cheeks and the flexibility of my jaw. He examined the inside of my ears, then my pupils, my nose and my mouth eventually. After this inspection of the head, he went to the torso and massaged my neck, looking for some artery, then examined my breasts searching for unnoticeable tumors. He went onto my stomach where he pressed some zones which made me nauseous, then he reached… there. Omegas are often tested in these parts, by all medics, and that starts at birth with the pediatrician. However, I remained uncomfortable with the act, and it was but my third time only, so this was natural. He looked scrupulously and meticulously, pressed his thumb against the inside of my thighs for a better view, and I felt my heart speed up. Lucikly, it didn’t last long and soon, I was released and directed towards a door at the opposite of the entrance one.

I was naked still, the air still glacial, but I thought I had went through the hardest part. Medical checks weren’t uncomfortable for me only, it’s something we grew used to with time and exaggerate repetitions, they all made us feel humiliated us at the beginning.

Another Alpha took my forearm as I left the room and had me walk through long, uncolored corridors. It wasn’t insalubrious, nor particularly unpleasant to see, merely cold and unwelcoming, like unending hospital corridors, or even like, oddly enough, like the corridors of a municipal pool. Wet, mainly whitish…

The Alpha pulled my arm with animosity, I had done nothing though, and I struggled to follow the cadence. The corridors began to be constellated with doors, randomly enough. The wood the doors were made out of, was rotting by the minute, I thought all doors led to some dungeon, but the deeper we went through the limbo of these hallways, the better the quality was, and soon, glass doors replaced the rotten wood and pierced the walls, allowing to see the insides of these sterilized rooms. I caught sight of bunk beds and simple closets. There were, near the doors, framed room numbers as well as the building’s aisle we were in.

The Alpha eventually let go of me in front of one of these doors, the four hundred and fiftieth, and opened the door thanks to an electronic card, then threw me inside like a bag, before locking the door behind her and leaving for Gods know where. Surely looking for another to transport.

The room was hexagon-shaped. The wall opposed to the door boasted a window which gave sight of the yard we had crossed to reach the facilities. The door was cut in two sides strictly symmetrical, two bunk beds face each other and at their feet, against the fall, the closets I had seen earlier, in a wood deprived from any extravagance.

I found a pile of clothes in a mess on each mattress and I inspected the closets to see if there weren’t any other. I saw nothing but rotting wood and cobwebs.

I all of a sudden felt sensitive, and I wept for I was imprisoned in this place, and I wept for I was not free anymore, and I wept for my family wasn’t with me. My life had just been stolen from me, I knew it as soon as I began to forget I once had been free, sooner than the others realized it.

* * *

Some months after I entered university, I spent most of my time apologizing to Tsvetan. I thanked him like one would thank a god for accepting my request, and I endeavored to keep the house clean as good as before, although it became an arduous task. I finished my days fatigued by all my efforts, and I had to admit I hadn’t expected to be this low under the average university level. I had thought of myself as smarter, and that was a mistake which stung desperately.

One evening, though, I took it upon myself and, instead of letting Tsvetan take me, I requested of him to hear my questions, to purely discuss. It wasn’t something married couples used to do, so I found myself quite ridiculous to ask him not to do it tonight.

He accepted, much to my surprise.

“What do you want to talk about?” he inquired with a… charming interest.

“… To be honest, I always wondered what you did in Alphaformation.”

“That’s what’s bugging you? Nothing astonishing, I can assure you that.”

“Still, I’d like to know.”

He observed me for a long time and breathed in deeply. I thought I had upset him, and I lowered my head, sign of submission.

“Well, it begins in the blue centers… We get our blood tested and they get samples from all over our bodies. Then, uhm, I don’t know, does it interest you that much? Why?”

“It’s a mysterious part for us, don’t you think? You know everything about me and I know everything about you, except the lustrum we’ve spent apart. I don’t feel like we grew up together.”

It was a euphemism. During the wedding ceremony, I had the feeling I was marrying a total stranger.

“I… I see. Then, after the blood tests, we’re sent to our dormitories, they were properly prepared. Everything was clean and ready to welcome us, and it’s a lot of people. Nice Omegas took care of us, served us food, washed the clothes, well, normal stuff, you know. On the morning, we had physical training, and the afternoon, lessons. Simple stuff, we were just kids, so we began with mathematics, then history, and economics and each day, it was one hour of sex ed for three hours of other subjects thrown inside there randomly. It was mainly sex ed though, well, I mean, it must’ve been the same for you.”

No, I can’t say so. What mattered the most for us was survival.

The sex ed taught in Omegaformation isn’t sex ed. On the one side, yes, we learned everything there was to know about genitalia and existent diseases, the ways we could counter them, everything related to sexuality in some way was precisely detailed, with an accuracy thirteen year-old Omegas didn’t truly need.

But there wasn’t just this side. The red centers are rape dungeons. We all spent two hours a day on sex ed, the first hour was the calm one, theoretical teaching. Then came the practice, and each day, a new student would be chosen and forced to undress. The teachers were all Betas and showed shamelessly how to correctly position oneself on a _superbum_ , how to best pleasure one’s Alpha. So the chosen student would have to reenact the different poses they had explained, the poses “best for breeding”.

These hours were the worst. We witnessed, powerless, the torture inflicted upon our comrades. When one failed, another was called, and so a moral paradox appeared: did I want to willingly fail to not undergo this torture, or would I do my best, show my body under its worst angles, with great immodesty, to protect my friends from this treatment? At first, I chose the first solution, until I got severely reprimanded. After that, I executed the second, and I lost, with time, both sense of honor and pain.

Leaving the formation, however, didn’t get anyone to talk about these rapes. Each Omega sinks into fatal mutism, which permits the perpetuation of this terror.

But who am I to speak such words, when I wouldn’t be able to mention these moments? I write them down in this book, but I have the firm intention to never unveil the secrets it contained until times ask for it. Perhaps I’ll have to burn it if some obstacle comes my way. If I’m sent for reformation. If a police search is carried out on the house.

I remained laying as I listened to Tsvetan’s tales. I glared at the ceiling, my hands together on the blanket which hid my body. I slept naked, of course.

“Otherwise, we’d do lots of sports. Many different ones. We were taught how to use firearms. I was one of the best snipers of my floor, to be honest.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’re going to war anytime soon, everything’s alright nowadays. Well, sorry. World news must bore you, sorry…”

The Omegaformation doesn’t like it. But I do. Please tell, I beg of you.

“Kind of. I prefer to learn more about you.”

“Pff, that’s flattery”, he said as he kissed my cheek. “We should go to sleep, shouldn’t we? You have university tomorrow. Are you lessons okay? Are Alfred and Sadiq behaving?”

“Good. They do their job. You doubt them?”

“No. I worry about you, is all.”

“You’re too kind. I don’t deserve this.”

He didn’t answer, but kept a smile on his face, glaring at the same point on the ceiling which had kept my attention. I wondered more and more how such a kindhearted Alpha, so nice, so sweet, could stay with the mistake I was. I couldn’t give him anything. Not a child, not money, not honor. I’m just a capricious Omega who stepped in a scholar field he shouldn’t have reached, just to protect my brother from the evils of the world.

“Now that you speak about it, I’d like to know as well”, he suddenly spoke out.

“Sorry?”

“How was it, the Omegaformation? Sometimes, I get the feeling all the newly graduated Omegas look like each other. All boast the same behavior, the same manners, it all looked like they were clones of one another. I’m glad you didn’t end up like them. But this result must be linked to the teaching there, am I right?”

I didn’t know if he wanted to test the limits of my integrity, or if he was just proving to be the naïve and candid kind of Alpha. I didn’t manage to decipher the true meaning behind his words, and I was afraid of answering wrong. Nonetheless… for the first time in years, I felt like I had to be honest. If I wasn’t like all Omegas, it was because I’m a mistake. I escaped, somehow, the system, and against my will.

“Tsve… What do you think of… the Nature traitors?” I asked him then.

I don’t know if there will be, at the time you’ll read this, a book covering the expressions we use. Nature traitors is quite transparent. Typically, it’s the forbidden case of an Omega falling in love with a fellow Omega. Or an Alpha courting an Alpha. They can’t breed, they can’t contribute to society and challenge the rules Nature had dictated. They are hunted down and sent for reformation. Often, they die there.

“It’s… odd to feel something for an Alpha, of course. It disgusts me just thinking about it”, he truthfully answered, on a mechanic tone which sounded more like a lesson. “But… If I want to be honest, I’ll say… I don’t care. I hope you won’t find this eccentric of me, but I think these people deserve to live like everyone else. To be reformed because of love…”

“Typical couples are often loveless” I decided to add.

“It’s true… I think we should let people do as they wish. In the end… I don’t know, I’m perhaps the one in need of reforming.”

It always ended like this. Tsvetan couldn’t hold a conversation without this negative note. Of course, it was not his fault. The formation he had went through didn’t train him for this kind of discussions. Alphas aren’t natural brutes, their training is what makes them these tyrants. They are taught violence can solve anything.

“No, I agree.”

He turned to face me, brows furrowed.

“It’s the first time it happens for us to speak like that.”

“… you don’t like it?”

“I think I do.”

His face relaxed all of a sudden, and he took my face between his hands before kissing me tenderly, with a passion I had never found in him before. He amorously caressed the bangs which framed my face and I deciphered in his eyes an emotion which I had never read before.

“The Omegaformation was the worst period of my life”, I whispered bluntly. “There, we are raped, hurt, mistreated, and forced into submission. They make idiots out of us with meaningless lessons, we just learn discipline in front of Alphas.”

I ended this list by stopping the strokes I had given to his hands. I stared at him still, and I see his face go through many emotions he had bottled up before.

“I’m sorry”, I began again. “I shouldn’t have lied. Those are lies, I’m just an ingrate…”

He took me in his arms and closed them around me tightly. His cheek was wet against mine, and I couldn’t help but tear up a bit too. What had happened to him?

“I always wondered”, he started before pausing, his voice trembling against my skin. “if the rumors were true. I had never dared ask.”

“I know.”

“All seems so natural. No Omega’s complaining, why is that? The fear of being scolded?”

“You could denounce me and have me reformed”, I matter-of-factly enunciated. “Because I don’t correspond to you anymore, because… many things. A lone word from you, and I’ll exit the red centers with a whole new personality. Not everyone has the chance to have the kind Tsve by their sides.”

He went then onto regrets. He said he felt bad for the times we made love. Most of the time, he admitted, he didn’t particularly want to, but informed me of a treatment Alphas are administred during their formation. A libido stimulator which evaporates from the body naturally, but whose remnants stay in the blood and influence the brain up until death.

He apologized many times. I assured him it wasn’t like he acted against my will, I had never shown a sign of refusal, but he countered that the absence of sign is no invitation.

I didn’t know what to answer. Tsvetan had more reflection in him that what I first thought. I learned, this evening, that he had the same questions I did. His thoughts, parallel to mine, reflected his Alpha spirit in front of mine. All our wonderings were but mere obstacles of nature we had never been told about. Formation isn’t there to teach us convivence, I was convinced of it. We aren’t educated to live together, but to live with. My education allows me to live with any Alpha of the world, anyone really. I would know how to behave, how not to vex them, how to pleasure them.

I can do it with anyone. However, I wouldn’t be able to speak to them about my problems without them disregarding them. I wouldn’t be able to blame the ancestral order of society, stuck under the blanket just after refusing copulation.

But with Tsvetan, I did that.  And he agreed to my ideas. It seemed unbelievable.

And so I smiled him a sharp-toothed smile, as proudly as I could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the third chapter. Quick, aren't I? I'm full of ideas for this fic.
> 
> I had many things to say for this chapter but I forgot everything I had in mind. So let's get straight to point: the last sentence is an obvious reference to the first chapter, where Liviu hides his sharp teeth because they aren't adequate. He suddenly accepts his own smile there.
> 
> Some expressions I use are references to The Handmaid's Tale from Margaret Atwood. My intention is not to discredit her feminist work, although I use such an important book for a bad fanfiction like this. I treat her work respectfully and love her books, please do not take offense in me using these expressions. These are "red centers" and "traitor of nature". The red centers are, in the book, the place where the handmaids are trained to please their commander, so the name's fitting. "Traitor of nature" doesn't appear directly, though she uses "gender traitor", and I replaced gender with nature. The notion of "gender" doesn't exist in this world, there are only Alpha/Omega/Beta natures. I use feminine and masculine pronouns for the readers' understanding, and if I could create a whole new language for this world, which everyone would perfectly understand, then I'd do, but I can't, so we'll stick with English.
> 
> Little explanation of this world's history: after the clannish wars, during which all the clans of the continent faced each other, the number of humans drastically went down because of all the war losses. Omegas, which didn't fight, became more numerous, but many died without a child for there wasn't enough Alphas, as many died on the battlefield. Problem is diseases and poverty reigned over the continent, and many more people died. This happened centuries before the story, but humanity still hasn't overcome these obstacles of the past; so governments promoted "contribution to society", as they call it. To contribute to society, you can : study to work later, be elected to manage the country/the town/the community and finally, you can give birth. To engage in one of these exempts you from the two others. Thus, Omegas don't have to study when they have a child. Alphas can't give birth, so they're forced to study then work or to be elected. This explains the gap between the natures. Betas have more choice, of course.
> 
> Next chapter is gonna focus on Betaformation and love in general, more humane relationships, like friendship. I've spoken about sexuality too much now: it's logical, it's the biggest part of this fictive human culture, but it's over now!
> 
> PS: I apologize for any typo you could find. And please think of commenting, I'd like to see what people think of this story.


	4. Bonds of blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introduced in this chapter:  
> Norway: Lukas  
> Denmark: Mathias  
> Iceland: Emil  
> Rome: Marco  
> France: Francis
> 
> This chapter has a different tone from the others because Liviu is narrating "current" events. Know that Liviu's actually writing all of this after it happened, but sometimes gets so caught up with his own stories that he switches tense. Or I'm messing up because languages.
> 
> Basically, I'm done with explaining his backstory. We know enough for the main story to happen now. The end cliffhanger is kind of... lame, I know. Things happen, sometimes.
> 
> Read the end notes for detailed analyses of my work.  
> At the end of the story, I will perhaps reorganize my thoughts and post them as the last chapter to explain stuff precisely, so that my explanations aren't just in chapter footnotes.

The next day, I didn’t go to school. I asked Tsvetan to warn them my heats were beginning, and that it was impossible for me to be there. Omegas are excused from any function when in heat, and even more when their function includes interaction with Alphas. One doesn’t stop procreation when it’s necessary.

In total honesty, my heats hadn’t begun yet. The embarrassment they usually came with hadn’t manifested yet, though it wouldn’t be for long. I wasn’t this far away from the start of the cycle, but I had my reasons to lie to them. Tsvetan did not know either, and although I disliked lying to him, I had to force myself to, so that my plans for the day weren’t jeopardized.

I announced him I had to pay a visit to a friend of mine. He accepted and even decided to take me there himself. He pretexted that he feared I’d be attacked on my way there while in heat. It was an odd fear, though not uncommon, as it was found in many people still.

The friend I speak about is an acquaintance dating from the Omegaformation. It is a young and discreet person who lived withdrawn, in serenity and modesty. He isn’t dead, no, but it was such a singular Beta that I felt I could only speak about him in the noble tense of the past. He was, for me, one of the greatest person the world had ever witnessed, and deserved all the honors he could possibly receive.

Tsvetan opened the car door for me and kissed me goodbye. Before going back in, he stopped and took my forearms in his hands. I thought at first he had noticed something abnormal on me, and I questioned him about it. I didn’t want to look unprepared.

“No. I was just admiring the view.”

I chuckled lightly and lowered my gaze, then lifted it back up and showed him an indecent smile, the ones I allowed myself to give more often, the ones he deserved largely, my true smiles, too big to be modest and as sharp as a beast’s.

“I should take time to do that too. You’re spoiling me, today. What is the occasion?”

“I have an appointment with Andrei’s instructors… He’s of age to be formed, and because we refused to send him… I was requested there.”

I answered nothing. These affairs were none of my business, so I did my best not to be interested. That involved my brother nonetheless, the one I had decided to study for. Shyness overwhelmed me then, a shyness I couldn’t find a reason to, and it took me some time to express my thoughts to Tsvetan. He glared at me as I stuttered my sentence out, visibly awkward.

“And… what do you plan to tell them?” I finally managed to stammer to his face.

“I will enlighten them on the situation. They have nothing to reproach us, we are doing things by the book. I have to go. I’ll come back in two hours to get you home.”

I agreed and he eventually left. His firm gait and his finely presented body in his outfit for great events intensified the feeling of love I worshipped him with. Was it for his beauty? For his so typical behavior of an Alpha? Was I in love with the person or the nature? And so I walked on this stony pathway which led to the community residence my friend lived in with all these wonderings buzzing in my ears. Cozy red flowers kissed my feet on the way. These flowers were filled with images of everyone who has ever touched these stones, they knew more on the place than the inhabitants themselves, and I found myself dumbstruck again at the desire to communicate with them freely.

They would have told me these community residences are narrow and regrouped many households. Tsvetan didn’t want to live in one, he preferred an individual residence, claiming the intimacy he had known as a child of the countryside was dear to him. It was all a question of tastes. I had to admit I liked community life better.

I traversed the entryway. It led to the breeding-ground of the building, but I don’t think I would have found my friend there. Breeding-grounds are present in all community residences, as well as in all neighborhoods. That is where seminaries take place, but that’s a story for another day.

I took the stairs and walked up to the third ground. Two doors faced each other, and I chose to knock on the number eight. I pushed the doorbell and waited, hands crossed in front of me. There wasn’t any originality in the staircase. Important was that the community had been shaken to core by recent tragedies, and one of them was the death of the head-Alpha. This death had them remove all the decorations of these walls.

He had been an admirable Alpha, it was still clear in my mind. His name was Marco, and he used to have the unfortunate tendency to mispronounce my name. He articulated it as “Livio”, as naturally as ever, as if this name was familiar to him. I had inquired about it one day, but he remained quiet. He told me off angrily, perhaps I had touched some sensible cords. He was full of mysteries, married many times. He had children though, whose Omegaparents died, so he raised them alone. He luckily assisted to his grandchildren’s births and claimed he could die in peace now. His funerals happened in pure tranquility. Not a single tear was shed, but we all left heavy-hearted with our minds always wandering away.

And today, the community he had managed, was on the verge of breaking down.

Mathias opened the door with an affected smile; he didn’t like me much and although it wasn’t reciprocal, we had a tendency to keep our distances. He was nice and modest, and liked living in simplicity. He was the actual head-Alpha of the community, but his lack of professionalism and fixed ideas prevent him to gain control over the situation. He was appreciated for his styles, and not so for his brains.

He welcomed me politely, by the book, showed me where to take my mantel off, although I knew where it was already, and let me join Lukas in his room.

The poor one was bedridden and didn’t have a choice. To understand his situation, his background was to be detailed first. Lukas entered the Omegaformation at the same age as me, but didn’t stay for long, two months approximately. It was a complicated period for him, and that’s an understatement. He refused to take part in the training parts, didn’t respect the rules and, often, offered me to escape alongside him. He had been my roommate and had slept on the bed above mine.

Though he had gotten punished an innumerous amount of times, nothing worked, and soon, the punishments left indelible marks on his body. He underwent more difficult tests, and it was discovered about him that he was not an Omega, but a Beta. His body had responded to his Alphamother’s scent with Omega scents, and his presence amongst us didn’t help his body chase the confusion away. It was not uncommon for Betas, as it is due to some infantile malfunctioning of the pheromones, and it is often diagnosed early in life. Unfortunately, Lukas went through the analyses unrevealed, and everyone believed he was an Omega, until the day they were all proven wrong, and him as well. He was violently taken away from the Omegaformation world to enter Betaformation.

He stayed there for a long time and married his first betrothed. Mathias was made aware of these misadventures and yet agreed to marry Lukas still, although his family could have invalidated the wedding for lying and cheating. They had signed for an Omega after all. Everybody thought he had been calmed down, almost pacified, and I myself believed that, as he came out of Betaformation. And yet, during a seminary in the breeding-ground of the community, he boasted rebellion and flippancy, which got him sent to reformation thanks to Marco. He disappeared from the surface of the world for five long years.

Mathias didn’t stop hoping and waited patiently, perhaps even stupidly, his lover’s return. He received no sign of living for a very long time, and me as well. One day, it was asked of him he go to the Natural Office of the city, and when he came back home, it was with a child. The news spread around quickly: his Alphason was home. The authorities assured him Lukas was healthy, but reformation takes time, and he conceived a son during that time. His son.

The explanation had been wobbly, filled with inaccuracies which went unnoticed by a father who had discovered himself in the process.

Mathias had warned me. He may not like me, but he understood how much I estimated the friendship I had with Lukas, and even let me near the child. Lukas had named him “Emil”, or so he was told, and therefore, that’s how he called him as well.

Three years passed, and Lukas came back. He wasn’t a changed Beta at all: he boasted the same personality, kept all his memories. He looked the same as well, blond hair long enough to be wavy at the tip. He recognized Emil as his legitimate Alphason and took care of him normally.

One lone thing had been changed.

He couldn’t walk anymore.

His legs were not working anymore.

* * *

“Are you alright?” he asked me with a low-pitched voice, strangely attractive.

I had remained concentrated on his unmoving legs for too long, he had noticed. What kind of deep stupidity kept me alive?

“Sorry. Yes, everything is well. How is Emil doing?”

“Like a child. He cries, screams, and spends more time with Mathias than me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t daresay…

“I suppose my condition saddens him. It looks like he’s speaking with a moribund when he sees me bedridden most of the time.”

“You should move around in your wheelchair.”

“Maybe. You came here to question me, right?”

“Are you willing to answer? It’s about Betaformation.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want.”

Lukas was the only one I had informed about my project. He repeated he didn’t get it, that there was no problem with the world, just the people. I answered that he had not understood my goal in the end, and he kept quiet. So I asked him about the beginning of the Betaformation.

“We undergo many tests, and then, it’s complete isolation. We are sent many types of pheromones to study our bodily reactions. Most importantly, they take pheromones out of our promised mates from the two other formations and have us smell them to make us used to them. You know, as Betas, we’re not that good with smells, so they train us to differentiate the pheromones of our mates. The…”

“Lukas!” Mathias interrupted from the end of the stairs. “I’m going to get Emil at school!”

Lukas didn’t answer. He sat up against his bed, pulling his legs with difficulty. Passively sat on the stool Mathias had given me, I looked at his blocked body moving around strangely.

“Lukas… your legs. Who’s done that?”

I don’t know what went through my mind this day. He never told anyone. Mathias had never dared to ask, only once, but had been rejected with coldness.

I instantly knelt down. I begged for forgiveness, asked for him not to hold it against me. I was so careful with what I could say, all my thoughts were filtered, and it had taken me some time to perfect my technique. The familiar comfort of Lukas’ presence had made me lower my guard.

I didn’t want to look at him. He was unmoving, I could hear that, and I lamented even more. What an imbecile, what an idiot I was!

“Is it for your book?”

I lifted my head up. He was glaring at me without hate nor disdain. His features, softened by life’s wear and tear, made me realize, and his gaze filled with sadness and melancholy, hit me like a fist in the guts. Deep inside, I knew who was at fault. Everybody knew, but we all kept that fact silent.

It was so rare, after all. Some indocile elements are threatened during reformation. Oftentimes, they are told they’ll be sent to the Fronts, where death reigns supreme, the former no man’s land of the most recent war. The toxicity of these territories diminished with time, but rebellious elements are forced to clear the deadly items away, as a punishment. The trash there provokes many different illnesses, but most importantly, physical and mental weakenings. Many reformed ones came back demented from this hard work, but they were fertile still. This option was the commonest.

The other one, which Lukas had certainly chosen, was as cruel. Elements destined to reproduce, in other words, Omegas and Betas transitioning to Omega, are mutilated. We are nothing but walking matrixes for them, and as I’ve heard it before: “we need your uteruses only, the rest is worthless”.

“During reformation, I was asked what I liked better between death and hemiplegia. I was attached to a possibly electric chair and hadn’t eaten for twenty days straight. My answer had been quick, and I asked to live. Sessions after sessions of conditioning led to nothing, all they had to do was find the opportunity to handicap me and silence me in the end.”

There is always a reason for being sent to reformation. Legitimate or not, people don’t care. The reformed ones are seen as lower than dirt itself, just a worthless good-for-nothing idiot who couldn’t follow the rules dictated by Nature.

“I should have chosen death perhaps.”

“You’ve got an Alphason. Wouldn’t it be a waste?”

“You’re saying that because you contemplated it as well, am I right?”

“We all have the tendency to think about these things”, I tried to say. “Death, life, these are dumb questions which confuse us. We’re better off not thinking about those.”

“I only see one solution to stop thinking.”

I didn’t answer. Lukas would beat me in all our controversies. The time he spent bedridden was spent smartly as well. He reflected about his own life, the others’ lives, life in general. It was a question which tortured him for many years. He had been born, had birthed, had seen births, and felt like he hadn’t accomplished anything. His useless legs had torn his dreams down to see satisfaction elsewhere.

That is why they break the legs. A free body is free to cheat, to lie, to deviate from the right path. They didn’t want Lukas to leave the country, for example. Didn’t want him to miss his duties of a Betafather.

“I didn’t phrase that correctly perhaps.”

“I assure you you have. You’re just meeting the real me.”

“No… he lacks the zeal for rebellion, the thirst for uprising and the inclination to fight”, I added.

“Are you trying to indoctrinate me in _your_ fights?” He looked down on me.

“I don’t have fights.”

“Feels like to me you’re writing a very provocative diatribe.”

“I… don’t diatribe anything. I’m keeping a diary that I find more objective than famous historians.”

“And you keep your negative views on formation, people, yourself and even Tsvetan in here. The first lunatic that finds it and we’ll never see you again. Or rather, it wouldn’t be really _you_ anymore if you came back from reformation.”

Perhaps Lukas wasn’t skilled for insensible comments. Perhaps he was just being an imbecile, here’s that.

I’m no fomenter.

Our session was disturbed by Mathias’ and Emil’s return. I decided to leave early, and left them alone, to Mathias’ great pleasure. He had insisted for me to have some tea, which I of course accepted: I didn’t want to sound rude, then he made me understand he didn’t want me here anymore.

So I went down the stairs to reach their community breeding-ground.

The friendship between me and Lukas was the sincerest I had. The most honest would be more appropriate and respectful for Tsvetan, but Lukas had this constant bitterness he threw at me: he wasn’t scared of anything. I was self-conscious of the importance I put on the impression I give off, but he had never cared. Nobody dared mock him during his youth because of the fear he inspired, fear based on his natural eccentricity. He just tried to live his life, as best as he could.

The room which corresponded to the breeding-ground was decorated with children’s drawings on the one side. All these drawings portrayed approximately the same scene: the monthly grouping which happened there. Each painted page was signed off by shaky letters, fearful of the very weight of their own existence. On the other side, rich paintings tarnished the nice wall. They were organized mathematically, with such a clear lack of freshness, that I couldn’t help but look away to admire the children’s drawings instead.

An uncomfortable heat lit up inside me seeing the representations of the community children. Children’s drawings are never sad nor hopeless. Only adults can paint a still-life or a danse macabre. Children show, with their pencils, how their usual life goes, their family and friends, because they know more than anyone that there isn’t anything you can quite enjoy like life.

After looking at the colorful wall, I looked away eventually to reach the stage which overlooked the rest of the room. That’s where the conference tripod stood, or the stand, the one the head-Alpha used to make his official announcements to the community.

“There is a hidden part inside the tripod. I want you to bring back to me what’s inside” my uncle Francis had told me firmly.

My Alphauncle Francis, the one who had notified Tsvetan about my parents’ passing. I knew him since my childhood and I had thought for a long time we shared a special bond, something intimately precious. My parents had narrated his life to me many times, a life they spiced up with epic novel elements. They sometimes gave me letters visibly destined to me, from him. Trivial letters which related his grand life. He was for me an example of virtue and humanity.

Unfortunately, my parents revealed to me, when I was fourteen, that all of this was a masquerade, that they had written the letters themselves to please me.

That Francis didn’t give a fuck about me.

After my parents’ death, he tried to keep contact, surely moved by pity. He must have felt bad to be the only remaining living member of my family with my brother, and requested to meet up with me promptly. He took of his time to pay me a visit. At first, I remained shy. His presence troubled me. I found in him so many similarities with myself, that I surprised myself by counting them, while he went on and on about trivialities and trifles.

“Liviu, excuse me there, but, are you listening to me?” He interjected, fixing his glare into mine.

“Of course”, I lied.

“What are you looking at, then?”

The lack of politeness I appeared with stunned me. I vowed Francis a deep admiration I had developed over time. I couldn’t get the tales of my parents about his life out of my mind, and I could only imagine the young Liviu, past me, the dream traveler and the thought organizer, twist my memories around, mix up reality and fiction. The beautification of my uncle was orchestrated by my naïve mind which longed to see in him was I truly wanted to bring out of myself.

Filled with courage and magnanimity, he was a prowess of kindness, as well as both handsome and charismatic, and I understood why my parents had hidden him away from me.

He was the living stereotype of the Nature traitor. The obvious vanity which manifested in the cares he applied to his hair, the sweetness of his gestures, and the application he had to look like an Alpha, this stereotype both verifiable and verified from the Nature traitors who force their natural traits in the vain hope of remaining undiscovered, were huge clues to be overlooked.

I don’t know what went through my mind as I glared at him. I lowered my head instantly, as if hit behind the head. I would have deserved that.

“Your parents haven’t told you”, he continued. “But… Now that they’re gone, I think you ought to know. And I wouldn’t be able to keep _that_ secret hidden any longer.”

He got embarrassed by the intimacy he was forced to create between us, as if we had loved each other since forever. He uncomfortably fiddled with his blond bangs. I reverently stayed bowed, but perhaps was I too much of a bother. I couldn’t possibly understand what kind of revelations would make such a proud Alpha stutter. The high esteem I had of him made it all look wrong, unthinkable, as if he was playing a role rather than being truthful.

“You know Marco Vargas, right? It’s about him. It’s too much for me to take it to the grave.”

I looked up at him as I felt his piercing eyes fixated on my head. Calmly and with increasing interest in his confidences, I listened to his panicked breathing, his body’s rhythm with these agitated mimics of his.

After minutes of blahs, he got abruptly quiet and started his sentence over for the fifth time:

“This Alpha. Was my father”, he eventually claimed.

* * *

I remember the news shook me to the core more than it should have. So my mother was Marco’s hidden daughter. My uncle didn’t detail anything to me. He continued to claim that Marco had kept a diary all his life, and had even concealed it inside the stand the head-Alpha uses for his announcements to the community. And that stand could be found in the breeding-ground.

How he knew it, that I learned nothing about. He purely ordered me to seek it and bring it back to him. He wanted answers to the questions which had bugged him since forever. Why had Marco disowned him? Why had my mother been disowned as well? Francis claimed he couldn’t go there, as he had been banned from the community by his own father years ago.

I found these wonderings futile. Reasons don’t matter. In the end, it’s all the same. I’m part of the bastard lineage of the Vargas family, the one nobody knew the existence of. However… an ounce of sick curiosity, a grain of thirst for knowledge animated my body to seek after the book. I never understood my uncle’s intentions, but neither could I get mine clearer in my heart.

Why pursue my origins? My origins are with Tsvetan. My body shivered as the treacherous hand, the one trying to distance me from Tsvetan by finding this book, drew odd arabesques on the stand’s wood, seeking for the mechanism which would open it.

I discerned it near the ground, a part colored in a slightly different way, just a tad, an almost invisible spot that I took off to unveil a tiny set of cords which, once triggered, elevated an entire side of the stand. In its hearts stood the book prized by my uncle, tarnished by the passing of time. It wasn’t glorious, put there as if it had been forgotten or lost. Dust had amassed on top of it, traces of the past. I blew it away and closed the mechanism scrupulously, in the sinister silence of the lifeless breeding-ground.

The breeding-grounds are such warm places though. There, we meet, we have fun, we relax. I took pleasure in visiting the one in our neighborhood, listening to the pointless lives of my neighbors, the normality packed with serenity and banality. I went there with Andrei, to take part in many seminaries, as he loved playing with his neighbor friends. I watched him play, live, appreciate the present moment. Our breeding-ground is vaster than this one still, as our neighborhood sheltered many more souls than this community, but imagining lively filled me with a deep hopelessness.

Someone could come out of nowhere and take me by surprise. Anyone would have sent me to the authorities, especially in this highly traditionalist community. A child who had forgotten their toy, an adult looking after a document, or a memory.

Breeding-grounds shelter these kinds of things. I’m talking about memories especially. To be honest, it used to be their main trait in ancient civilizations. Breeding-grounds were rooms used for the defloration ritual, which invested a considerable place in a couple’s life. Ancient populations created this custom which was passed down onto us then. The couple, involving an Alpha and an Omega, or any association of Alpha or Omega with a Beta, even two Betas with one another, was to reach the breeding-ground during the evening of their marriage. They had to procreate under the eyes of the clan chiefs.

We still do it today. My first night with Tsvetan in the breeding-ground is stuck in my memory, but it’s a topic I’ve already touched.

Since the clannish wars, breeding-grounds evolved and adapted to modern times. Yes, we still have the defloration ritual there, but it’s rarer as newcomers in neighborhoods have become scarce, as everyone preferred to remain where their family lives, and time goes away slowly and takes ant-sized steps. Moreover, no one in our neighborhood had children they could marry off. In truth, Andrei was perhaps the only one at the right age, but it’s not an idea I cherish.

I reassured myself as I left the breeding-ground that I hadn’t alerted anyone. I left no sign of myself, a vague and discreet shadow, undiscernible, blended in the room’s obscurity.

Eventually, I passed the main door and waited for Tsvetan on the pavement.

I didn’t wait for long, as he soon approached with his car. He was driving quite fast, I thought candidly. It’s not safe.

When he reached me, he exited the car like a whirlwind and sported a panicked expression which was so typical of him. He wasn’t the kind to burst out of panic, but didn’t remain stoic either. He played a fascinating middle role where his rigid and straightened body acted like an out-of-service robot, and his face, on which you could see pure terror, allowed his words to come out like a submachine gun.

He tried to keep his panic quiet to flaunt his Alpha ego, but it metamorphosed him into this creature which seemed like it’d break out at the first inconvenient touch.

“Is everything alright”? I asked affectuously, my hand on his shoulder as he struggled with the door’s handle which refused to cooperate.

He didn’t answer immediately and took his time to take place in the car, after he opened the door for me, and eventually decided to inform me about it. He kept his hands on the steering wheel, furiously concentrating on the road.

“Liv, I’ve got bad news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, explanations about this chapter: breeding-ground is supposed to be a pun. In French (original language I write then, this story is a translation), breeding-ground is very close to the word "seminary" but simultaneously means "where you help people grow". Basically, it's a place where you're "bred" metaphorically, but quite also literally.
> 
> Second and last, global details of the story: I modified some things in the story. First, I reclassified the pairings as "Other" and not as "M/M" or "F/M", because they are no such genders in this story of mine, and I like consistency. I am sorry if you came here to read about underrepresented LGBT sexualities, but this is not the case here.  
> Second, I'd like to talk about what I'm doing with the story right now.  
> As you may know, my intention is to write an Omegaverse fic which doesn't seem weird or confusing.
> 
> To accomplish that, I tried to analyze what truly felt weird in the other stories I've read.
> 
> First of all, the Omegaverse stories often (always) introduce an obvious hierarchy between the three different categories. This hierarchy is always based on Nature, but that's completely wrong. In the story I try to write, characters CLAIM this is based on nature, but the formation centers prove the contrary. It's all social. Nature never applies such a hierarchy IRL in species like that. Basically, what I try to do is replicate what happens in our world with women. Women are told they are just bodies made to procreate, which is of course the biggest scam ever. People claim women are "biologically inferior to men", etc. All these kinds of insults are stupid, as you don't value someone's worth based on their "biology". Everyone is worth of respect and everyone is equal because people are more than bodies. So the thing is, the idiots who claim otherwise try to pass their biased opinion through Nature. That's what people do in this world too. They say they praise Nature and respect its choices when in truth, it's just expressing their discrimination but covered. You know, subrepticely.  
> Often though, other fanfictions think the Nature idea is true, and base the discrimination on that. It's not true. I'm not blaming, although my arguments may seem a bit violent. For instance, "The Promega Sonata", written by Ludwiggle73 portrays my view quite well: they claim it's Nature, when in truth, people are just being jerks. I hope you understand what I mean.
> 
> Second of all, these kinds of stories are oftentimes used to praise oppressive and unhealthy behavior between two people engaged in sexual activities. Thing is, I understand why people would want to write kinky stuff, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing to portray unhealthy relationships so positively because "it's Nature" (taking in account my precedent argument). What I try to do is blaming this kind of relationship. Make the characters realize what they do isn't quite right. Make them feel all of that is faked, that had they not been conditioned, they would act better to one another, would be nicer, etc..
> 
> Thirdly, mpreg is often at cause there. It makes many people uncomfortable, understandably enough. That's why I try to remove every mention of gender in the story. Thing is, I can't avoid pronouns or family relationships, so, for pronouns, I just stick with ours, to help understanding. For family relationships, I add "Omega"/"Beta"/"Alpha"/ right before to emphasize the Nature more than the gender. An Alphamother and an Omegamother wouldn't be called the same word at all. Sometimes, I don't add the Nature because I want it to remain subtle or unsaid, or to make the flow of the sentence more natural.
> 
> Overall, I try to make this world as much of a dystopia as I can. The inspiration comes from a fic named "raison d'être" written by wafflesoup. I imagine the world I create would lead to the world in this specific fic would a war be triggered. I advise you to read it, as it's really good.  
> Though I do not plan to have a war happen, I will try to elaborate more on the topic of the Alphas' contribution to society. Future chapters will become very dark for clear reasons and I will do my best to keep things interesting, as I understand the lone PoV of a single character with the same emotions throughout an entire fic can become boring at some point.
> 
> Also, I finished recently the book The Handmaid's Tale and I realize how much it affected my writing. From the flower motif to the behaviors of some characters, I can't help but apologize for that. It's such a great book I shouldn't use it for this kind of things, but it just... came naturally. The themes are pretty different in term of importance, but not when it comes to how they're presented. In the end, it's been of great use to me to develop my writing skills but also write dystopia, and it's also such a mind-changer I'm very grateful I was able to read it.


	5. The Child's Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for character death.

My favorite days are the festive ones. I like to make up excuses to celebrate everything I can. As a child already, I grasped all opportunities to have fun this way. I remember living with my brother for a year before going to formation, and his company, new to me, and yet so precious, had me commemorate everything he did. I heard, in his wails, the words of a prophet, and I took pleasure in seeing him living and growing. My parents scolded me for my lack of maturity, but I didn’t care. Wasn’t I allowed to have fun? I had heard stories of children who hissed at their sibling, in fear of being replaced, but it wasn’t my case, so these reprimands made no sense to me. They should have rejoiced for our bond was strong.

The year we spent together was one of the sweetest. I came back from school with a radiant smile, just thinking about seeing him again. I instituted futile rituals which entertained me: in the morning, a kiss on the forehead. If he was in a good mood, he would laugh without understanding, if he was in a mood to cry endlessly, he’d push me back vaguely. It didn’t bother me. It was a baby trapped with me for only company! I could conceive he might not like me. In the evening, when coming back, I’d kiss him on the cheek softly. I often came back during his meal, and I observed my mother breastfeed him curiously. She’d then say he wasn’t hungry anymore, and would let him in my arms for some time, tender to me. My days were rhythmed around these instants of euphoria, to know he was near me, so close to me.

He was it. He was my flower. I finally had someone to protect. And his arms, like vines spinning around mine, were as soft as petals and had the fragility of a poppy’s stem.

After his meal, he would fall asleep, and more than once, it happened between my arms. So I waited, sat on the living room’s sofa, unmoving, afraid to bother him. My mother left for the kitchen to prepare our evening meal, and my waiting was interminable. I rocked him delicately against my body, a rag doll on my chest.

Then, formation tore us apart, and I wasn’t allowed to see him for many years to come. Some nights filled with hopelessness, I could hear his cries echo in the back of my mind, a sinister background noise. I survived on the hardest days thanks to my memories of him, memories of my happiness, thanks to the joy I’d have to see him again after leaving this hellhole.

When I came back as an adult, I had wanted to pursue my rituals with him, find some sense of normalcy back. I wanted to hold him against me, administer him all the cares in the world. I had explained that to my father, but all he replied was that “my day would come too”, and that it was “common” to long for those things at my age.

That day never happened, and worse even, it became my worst nightmare.

When he started living with Tsvetan and me, I took the time to congratulate him for all his different works. I encouraged him to do anything, tried to send him in directions where I felt he had affinities. Each of our trips to the breeding-ground was a grandiose excursion, and I knew he was happy to see his friends from the neighborhood.

An Omega’s life is rigorously organized, like an instrument, each step in life was to be played adequately. It’s a system I couldn’t save him from, although I had poured efforts into it. Birth, for instance, was a special kind of celebration, as it corresponds to two festivities for two persons. The birthed Omega lives their “childbearer’s first ceremony”, in other words, the creation of a functional matrix. The Omega who had given birth celebrated the “natural apotheosis”, or rather, the accomplishment of their biological function. These wordings came from the Antiquity, or so the books claimed. Expressions which are so glorified nowadays, filled with so much sense of honor, that I felt bad using them out of the normal context of these ceremonies.

But there wouldn’t be any ceremony anymore.

 

Andrei wasn’t by my sides, nor was he waiting for me at home. We wouldn’t have to supervise his homework anymore, no worries for his formation either.

Tsvetan wept. Publically, even. The local newspapers turned it into some miscellaneous trivia. “An Alpha breaks into tears for the child he lost, “Omegacide: helpless parents”, “a child is assassinated near his school”.

We talked about it for some time. Tsvetan received the support from some town celebrities for his painful loss. It is true he had a hard time recovering. He had been devastated by the event, thought he’d stop everything, thought he’d suicide, thought he’d kill the child which had taken his.

“You can’t do that”, I had said during one of his anger outbursts, the ones during which my voice couldn’t reach his mind anymore.

“She has to pay! She has to die! She killed… she killed…”

“Andrei. Andrei is dead. He has been killed”, I added coldly. “What will you do once you’ll have this child’s blood on your hands?”

He turned around, moved by something sardonic, and hit me in the face. Sent backwards, I stumbled on the wall, against which I was then hung, his hands unmovable around my neck. He toyed with it dangerously, like a doll, long enough to make me crazy, but soon I was released, and fell to the ground. He had scared himself. And yet, I could still feel, seeing the evil flame consuming his eyes, that he didn’t regret it, and that he’d do it again, would I show more disobedience.

It was a demon which had taken place in his heart. The unreasoned ire of a madman reigned over his spirit, and my job was to remain mute. I couldn’t fathom his wrath, nor his violence against me…

But what would I become without him?

“We have between our hands both too much of life and too much of death. The scales will tip where you’ll extend your arm.”

Kill Andrei’s murderer would become an arduous task. The child had been sent to the youth’s correctional court, and would remain on the justice’s radars for a while. Of course, she wouldn’t be punished. She’s just a child. We excuse their outbursts. Obviously! They’re not formed. They can’t control themselves.

My brother wouldn’t have killed anyone, though.

* * *

The body was given back to us. The autopsies didn’t last long, strangely enough. Tsevan had approached it, teary-eyed, and when his eyes were finally focused on the cadaver, he had lifted his gaze to me and crumbled into a fit of hiccups. The thanatologist to his right, a chubby Alpha, grimaced at this reaction, and even left the room. So we mourned.

I ran to Tsvetan, who had stood up abruptly, his eyes reddened by sadness and still pouring out tears, rivers along his cheeks. It pierced me.

“He’s dead…”

These words are so common. I had spoken them so many times before. I don’t know my life outside of death. I spent years of nerve-wrecking formation, I escaped their lethal grasp only by chance. I avoided reformation by spreading my legs for a high-ranking officer, all had promised me the widow’s kiss.

I wanted to announce him I did not care. That I was unaffected by death, as it had become a habitude. It shouldn’t sadden me anymore, but a pinch right in my heart increased my unease. An unease I couldn’t ignore, purely because it is not possible, climbed my back in a cold shiver.

After Tsvetan’s memorable shows, the radars were on us as well.

 

Traditions being dear to me, I put my efforts into respecting them meticulously. I prepared the body for its last ceremony. It had to be inhumed in its ceremonial outfit, the Purity’s Whitest Dress. It was quite the pedant name, but it was actually quite telling about human lives.

It is a simple white ribbon which has to be spun around the dead body, blocking the view of the genitalia, the belly button, and the right breast. Starting from the left feet to decorating the neck, the remaining part of the ribbon was used to inscribe the name of the body, the age, and the date of death. A knot was tied around the neck, elegantly but strongly, to ensure that the ribbon remain bound to this body even after decomposition.

That is how dead Omegas were embalmed. These primitive bandages originated from the Antiquity, where unmated Omegas were delivered to the buyers with a ribbon supposed to preserve their purity and virginity until defloration. Once they died, the ribbon was reused to seal their existence in the other world, so that the gods can identify them when they reached the heavens. Nowadays though, they serve the anthropologists more than the gods.

We’re so few to believe in the existence of an almighty.

Finally, we applied on the ribbon a mark either blue, green, or red, depending on the child’s nature the Omega had birthed. Taking in account the proportion between age and quantity of colored marks, the Omega received more or less honors. Died old with offspring reaching the dozen, it was national consecration. On the other hand, died unformed and childless, then it was national mourn.

The box in which the ribbons were stacked when unused, as one’s ribbon always belonged with the ones of the other family members, was dusty, and that was logical. One would also use the ribbons, tied around the ankle, when attempting to procreate and during pregnancy too. In the end, Andrei had worn his only after his birth, and in death, while I had used it in rare occasions which had become mythical. One would tell that like in legends: the Omega who did not fornicate.

Going back to the thanatologist’s place, I put the silky ribbon with a nonsensical delicacy. It was a cadaver beneath my fingertips, I could hurl it against a wall, hit it repeatedly, there would be not reaction, but what would the gods say? What would my parents say?

What would Marco and Francis say?

My entire family was finally dead. I had cousins for sure, Marco’s grandchildren, but I didn’t even know their names, so I had nothing to hope for. Only Tsvetan was left for me.

In other words, I was alone in the world.

“Liv”, a voice called.

I stood up from the chair positioned next to the body and faced Tsvetan, whom I was waiting for, and whose embarrassed grimace expressed more about his venue that words ever could. After hitting me, he went into a mute period and isolated himself in our room.

I understood his sadness quickly after. It’s a strange void which, curiously, fills us up all at once. Like an air balloon which grows and grows inside, until the emotion leaves no room for anything but itself. It’s this void, and this simultaneous fullness of sadness, which leaves us heavyhearted, which made our skin sensible to the other’s, which electrified our thoughts.

We’ll never go back to Andrei’s former school. I’m not bringing him to the neighborhood’s breading-ground ever again.

I’ll never cook for him. Never teach him anything.

I loved him, as much as I could, as much as I was allowed to love.

He had been my flower, now uprooted, torn apart, the flower I wasn’t able to protect.

“We can make it”, Tsvetan continued, nearing with open arms. He thought I’d walk backwards in fear of being hit again, but I didn’t, and let him come to me. I even decided to open my arms to him in return.

He jumped on me all at once, hugging my neck tightly, grasping my hair on my back desperately.

“We can make it, you said?” I asked, surprised. “We’re still alive, don’t cry.”

“What’s the point? What motivation can I find, when I can’t use it for the only son I’ll never have again!”

It was like a direct blow to the stomach. I was so deeply shocked that Tsvetan let go of me, taken aback in front of my eyes open wide by the emotion. He apologized profusely.

I wanted to resent him for saying such a thing, but I conceived his disappointment. The disappointment I am.

“I’m sorry” I whispered then. “Sorry I can’t give you anything.”

“Don’t say that. I didn’t mean to s…”

“Tsve, why don’t you marry someone else?”

Alphas can divorce, as long as another marriage offer is provided. Why would he stay? The only lock to our wedding had died…

“I can’t give you my family’s glory, military honors, children… We get along well, and I love you, like, so so much. But you could get anyone better elsewhere! You could get yourself one of these new, young Omegas, recently graduated. You could become general, colonel… There’re so many thing waiting for you out there, Tsve. I hold you back here, in these death-impregnated house with only this sad self of me, a broken doll, which you can’t fix.”

“Broken?”

“Tsve… I’m almost infertile. I cried each time we made love until some years ago. I endured my parents’ passing, then my grandfather’s, my uncle’s, my brother’s… my family is dead. I don’t have anyone in the world. If that’s not broken to you, then I don’t know. I don’t function like the others! Look at me! Speaking to you like some kind of… kind of…”

“Lover? Confidant? Friend?”

“I deserve to be punished.”

I wanted to make a scene out of that, throw a temper tantrum and ignore the world in favor of my own personal self.

It would have been quite unfair and egoistical before Tsvetan’s tears though, but what do you want? One does not control one’s thoughts, but one controls what one writes, and I found this scene noteworthy. I’ll read it someday later for sure. If I feel down one evening, if my heart’s monotony grows stronger, I’ll reread his sweet words, his love letter:

“I stay because I never even thought of leaving”, he declared, his lips shivering. “Because my life’s with you, here, and I don’t see it any other way. I love you, Liviu. I thought we had admitted that at least, that... all these rules for properties… they’re bullshit. We don’t care about those. I love you, Liv, and I loved Andrei like a son, and I love you like the only love in my life, and I… I don’t know… I feel like it’s too much right now.”

I could recognize Tsvetan there. Unable to express what he feels like.

“Perhaps just a tad”, I added, holding his hand and then kissing it.

* * *

Long after Andrei Miahi Borisov’s passing, the relationship between Tsvetan and I evolved positively. It was ravishing.

Although still touchy on some topics, that I know avoided easily, like a dance around words, Tsvetan had found an equilibrium of personalities. Once he passed the doorstep, he lost this cantankerous face of his, the ones he showed others, and became my best friend, my hero again. The only ally I had in this world.

With time, Tsvetan cut ties with his parents, who had taken a vile pleasure into belittling me for our lack of conjugal success.  Personally, I had excluded my uncle out of my life way before all of this, by means of prudence.

After getting his hand on Marco’s diary, he got used to contact me from times to times to inform me of his advances in his research on the book. It would seem strange to study a diary: events are supposed to be described chronologically, descriptions are written shortly after witnessing them… but as I lay my pen on the pages, reading again what I had written already, I realized that, in the end, if the reader has no clear access to my thoughts, my words become nonsensical. A shame. If my writing remains a mystery, it’s for the best in some way.

On the one side, I feel like I failed. I wanted to organize my ideas and, by unknotting the roots of my problems and burning them away, I thought I’d be able to order myself adequately in society. If they remained opaque however, that meant I had failed. On the other side, I wonder if it’s not what makes a book interesting for the future reader, if there is one. Who knows if I’m not writing humanity’s best psychological book?

I think I took back the structures I had read already, without noticing. So it’s blurry, so it’s incomprehensible.

Here’s then another supposedly dramatic event I have to describe to help the future research on my life.

My uncle is dead, as I have announced already. He had been publically executed one year after the acquisition of the secret book, which is why he had been arrested in the first place. Marco’s testimony certified that the book, if ever found, had to be burned, and in no way opened for anyone’s reading. As an Alpha’s last vows had not been respected, the criminal had been punished. And it had been discovered about Francis that he was a nature traitor anyway, so his case had been a quick one. Public announcement, a fifteen minutes procedure, and it was over. He was burned at the stake, and that was it.

After all these events, in a quite short timespan, I felt alive again, a sensation I had forgotten. It would be madness to think these deaths were the cause of my wellbeing, but perhaps the facilities which came afterwards were. I don’t know.

I recycled my knowledge in botanic to create rudimentary medicine which I showed around the seminaries at the breeding-ground proudly, which surprised the neighborhood. What is there to say? They think they know better and took me for a madman for being this enthusiastic after Andrei’s death, and I could understand that, but something had clicked in me, an epiphany on the meaning of life and death. The worst that could happen to me would be dying without being myself, with an injected personality, but they’ll never be able to break me. My confidence had become irresistibly tenacious. It had been a long and hard work, which can only be described through the numerous events I suffered from.

For now, I hadn’t been caught. For now, I was still me, unpunished, loving life with a crazy sense of pleasure.

“Hey, Liv. Gilbert’s been promoted this morning”, Tsvetan told me one day.

“Really?”

“Mh. He’s become project leader. So he’s my boss.”

“For real? That’s awesome! It must feel weird to bend over his every word.”

“Like I don’t do it for you already”, Tsvetan added with a smile, holding my face between his hands. “I can behave.”

“Like hell you can. You still don’t want us to have a pet snake”, I said as his hands slipped down my cheeks.

“That is a not a problem of authority, but common sense! What if it gets lost in the house?”

“It’s not worse than a cat.”

“You can’t possibly know.”

I had lifted my eyes to the skies dramatically. Something abnormal had settled between us, a relationship which was fit for us both, which filled us with illicit pleasure. Nobody knew us like that, not even my only friend, not even the Borisov family. We had become the perfect schizophrenics: unmoving and sad creatures on the outside, and the happiest couple of the world once protected by the others’ gazes. Simple, but forbidden. Simple, but happy.

Tsvetan had went and completed his extended military service, he had completed the three quarters a while ago, and he was gone for six months in a faraway military base, and I was left under Mathias’ supervision, whom we had asked first if it was a bother to him.

I had behaved satisfactorily, which had disgusted Lukas. He’d often take me aside, once Mathias was out, to ask me what was wrong with me. A morning, Mathias had landed in a house cleaner than he had left it the day before. Lukas didn’t take care of it, he simply couldn’t, and Mathias put efforts into cleaning, but wasn’t really… good at it. He’d erase what was big, what was disgusting, but the details, the most dangerous, were left alone.

I suppose this is the result from our different formations.

So I had cleaned everything, to show him my deepest loyalty and submission, the flawless servant, one he could use as he wished, until my husband comes back.

“Uh... thanks and… good job?” he had declared with a childish surprise.

“It’s nothing”, I countered, my eyes fixated on my feet. “Do you want me to keep cleaning when I’m here? I wouldn’t want to bother.”

“… Go on, do it. Don’t forget that you’re at your home at 3 till the evening.”

“I remember.”

He left.

In spite of my studies, I got nothing but a job as an educator in preschools, and I had refused. I would accept it later in my life, a day where I’ll be ready to make a difference, the day where I’ll have nothing to lose, where I’ll be able to raise children however I want to.

So I stayed home, and wrote. At Mathias and Lukas’, I cleaned up and helped Lukas when Mathias necessarily left for work. If Lukas was sleeping, poor thing suffered from chronic fatigue due to his malfunctioning legs, I took care of Emil as I could. The child disliked me somehow, he made sure I knew it, but why would I even care? I wasn’t doing it for him, neither for me, but for Lukas.

“Liviu, can we know what’s gotten into you?” he interjected at me.

“Sorry? What do you mean?”

“Why… why do you act like this? Tsvetan pays us for you to stay here. You’re more of a guest than a slave.”

“It’s my job, it’s all. I must find some way to occupy my mind.”

He remained quiet. He had been thoughtful, and I knew which words he didn’t want to pronounce. I disguised my rebellion with this obvious submission, and he wondered what I was plotting.

But the answer was clear. I wasn’t plotting anything.

Despite all of this, I shared with Lukas moments of intense complicity. I was unaware of his pains, being physical or psychological, but I listened attentively, on topics he never dared bringing up with Mathias. Yes, the Alpha was his favorite confidant, but unlike him, I was like Pandora’s Box. I was told everything, without restraint, and I stocked the data, the info. I knew the darkest things about Lukas and life on the Fronts…

I was a time bomb whose tictacking no one could hear. Honestly, I couldn’t hear it myself. I never realized the gravity of the situation.

I asked Lukas someday how his private life with Mathias was going.

“We don’t touch each other”, he had detailed frankly, almost shamelessly. “I can’t move, it’s more frustrating to him than anything.”

“Never ever?”

“Nothing. Last time we tried anything, he almost dislocated my hip because I couldn’t feel it.”

I had not answered for some seconds, but a thought, burning with passion, was eating me up.

“How do you do during your heats?”

“He used to try, with his hand exclusively. He stopped a while ago.”

“Isn’t… isn’t it bothering?”

“I have bigger problems than my libido.”

I had raised my eyebrows. What was there to do for him, in truth, than enjoy the last of his body? I know that, if I were unable to move around during the day, and that captivating activities were forbidden to me, I’d spend my time jerking off, at least.

“Do you want me to help?”

What went through me back then was an unconscious, unbridled impulse. The thrill for the forbidden, but simultaneously, the inconsequentiality of the act. Who would know about it but us two? And, what were the risks?

So when he nonchalantly accepted, I felt my cheeks heat up and my heart beat quicker. I didn’t love him like that. It was the curiosity aroused in me, the élan vital which awakened vicious passions… I liked that.

So I had removed his pants and underwear, and my hand slipped against his leg, in the vain hope of giving him in this single caress the passion Mathias had refused him. He hit my hand angrily, but after giving it some thoughts, he put it back himself on his thigh, not uttering a single word.

I took some time to reflect, remembering Tsvetan’s fingers against me, and the natural movement came quickly. I knew where to press, and after observing his reactions, analyzing his quirks, I positioned myself between his legs and proceeded to give him the only orgasm in his life.

We did it multiple times, unknown to Mathias or anyone else, and I never even told it to Tsvetan. It wasn’t cheating, one would need some amorous sentiment for that, and I had none for Lukas. If Tsvetan had done some similar act with another Alpha, I wouldn’t be so shocked.

It was but a mere list of rendezvouses during the six months I spent with them. After this semester, Mathias sent me home, where I waited _his_ return.

I had got but one announcement from his colonel, who assured me he was safe and sound. Direct communication was forbidden, under all its form, so I had only my hopes to keep me going.

And so, he came back.

We spent a peaceful night. He narrated to me everything that had happened, everything he had witnessed, heard, smelled, felt, everything that could captivate me about the outside world, outside the walls of the city, the desolated, ravaged world, destroyed by clannish wars and the ones after that.

His story was made on the balcony, under the starlit sky of a heatless summer. I could have caught a cold there. The constellations greeted us with their ethereal splendor, and each shooting star, whose form I followed with my fingertip, blessed us proudly. I held Tsvetan’s hand while he spoke, this knot lost in the sea of my hair, and with the other hand, I pointed at each constellation I could recognize. I had got an astronomy card game, a tarot of superstitions which amused Tsvetan, but which captivated me. It had taught me everything I now know about celestial bodies, viewed from Earth.

“It’s almost like another world out there, beyond the walls. And yet, it’s not hidden from us. Everyone knows, and nobody acts.”

“We can’t send anyone there” I added absentmindedly. “Way too toxic.”

“Perhaps robots…”

“Ah, you should know about it, Mr. Engineer.”

“I’m not engineer…”

“You should make a hobby out of that. Creating robots, I mean. You’ll perhaps live to become tomorrow’s inventor, and your creations would travel the world to cleanse it. And they’d make coffee too.”

“Don’t make fun of me, bastard.” Tsvetan laughed, punching my shoulder lightly.

“You’re the bastard here. Leaving me for six whole months. Couldn’t you have split it in two?”

“I could have. But I had to prove my loyalty somehow, and direct actions is always a good idea, right?”

“It’s not like we’re going after society…”

“If it can help the oppressed open themselves to the world like you did, I see nothing but pros, in the end. Do you realize the race against fate you’ve made? All the changes you went through? You dared not look at me in the eyes when saying hello mere years ago.”

“Old habits die hard. I’ve decided to live as a recluse anyway. I don’t want to see anyone but you anymore. They either take me for a madman, or a traitor, so it’s best to avoid them.”

“Didn’t you like going out? And what about Lukas?”

“I’ve seen Lukas enough for a whole life. His kid is nice, too. But not to me. Treated me like a slave because he took it from Mathias when he talked to his workers, and I couldn’t even protest.”

“And then? How are you going to spend your time?”

“You know, it’s been years now, and I’ve been writing… a diary.”

“A diary?”

“I write everything I deem important. I preserve everything going through my head, everything about you, about me, about us.”

“Is it detailed?”

“I wouldn’t say detailed. It’s more like a draft for some bad novel.”

“And so? What did you mean to say?”

“I’ll read it over and rework it. I’ll make haste, and then… we can leave, Tsve.”

The words flew to the stars, a promise made to the heavens, and the gods were our witnesses.

His hand slipped from mine, so I put it back on my stomach, caressing the soft fabric of my short shirt, too light to keep me warm.

Tsvetan was wearing one of the dresses worn by the apprentices during the military service, just under his blue shirt. These clothes were easier to accommodate to everyone and mass production was said to be easier so, and even when damaged at the tip, they could be reused again. You would usually give it back at the end, but Tsvetan had paid for it to take it back home. Under this dress, leggings, like everyone else.

I should have dressed more.

“Are you going to expurgate it?”

“Sorry?” I asked, surprised.

“Expurgate. Your diary. Will you do it?”

“What does it even mean?”

“Uhm… remove… remove what could bother the public, you see? It’s like making sure no one gets shocked. I think.”

“Where did you learn this word?”

“I took some of your books with me before departing.”

“And you read them all?”

“I thought that, perhaps, if you find them worth it, I might like them too.”

He had this sudden shy air on his face, perhaps embarrassed by his revelation. I thought it adorable, how he tried to keep up with what was dear to me… that he tried to understand me in some way.

“And do you plan on reading more?”

“Frankly, I think I do. Some are quite… gripping. I really felt like a depraved Roman man, or one of the angry gods, or a scientist making a pact with Satan…”

“You make a lot of efforts for me. I’d like to know more about your passion in return. What do you do when you’re not busy?”

“I think about you.”

“Aw, stop it… but truly, what do you do when you’re not tasked anything and you gotta find a way to entertain yourself?”

Tsvetan didn’t reply. He didn’t want to, and I understood his reasons. Or he didn’t know at all.

I never knew.

Words began to run short, and yet, the exchange intensified. Our bodies came close together instinctively, a warmth embraced us. Gazes, sensations which excite each of our cells, soul movements… everything brought us to a completely different world, where speaking isn’t sufficient to express what we feel. Cupid’s enthusiasm and Venus’ victims, we were, for this instant, fusional versions of ourselves, so much that I had the impression I was he and he was I.

Walls torn apart and broken barriers, I understand and realize.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself, I read. Better, even: I know how to belong to me and how to belong to him. Therefore, if you press me to say why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he;

 

Because it was I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I never said it, but I'm going to explain it now: Romania has been chosen as an Omega here and Bulgaria as an Alpha simply to fit the Blue/Red relationship they have going on. Bulgaria is the calmer, more reasonable one and Romania is wacky and weird and likes to be expressive and actually has a red theme in canon (red eyes, red mantel, etc.).
> 
> This chapter is important because it is about Liviu fully gaining his sexuality back. He controls his own sexuality, and intends to prove it this way. He has sex with Lukas, not romantically, and neither are really into it. It's just a stupid decision they decided to make. This is also mutually consensual.  
> Also, part of Andrei's name "Andrei Mihai Borisov" is taken directly from the fic named raison d'être, written by waffles0up here on AO3. It is also the main inspiration for this story, so, even though it's abandoned, give it a try.
> 
> This is the penultimate chapter. Or the last, depending on what you think about epilogues, because the last one will kinda be an epilogue. I hope you liked it and please think of reviewing!


End file.
